2) How Does Your Media Product Represent Social Groups?

We represented several different social groups within our film including both females and males - using and challenging gender roles put in place within society. 

In our film, we have represented females in a positive light, by creating a strong and independent heroine. This was specifically done to appeal to our female, secondary audience.

The presentation on Prezi that I made below, outlines some background research I did on the representation of women in sci-fi films over the years, from when cinema first started, to recent, modern sci-fi pictures.




Our media product has a good grasp of gender representation as it adheres to and goes against stereotypical gender roles. Our two lead roles, Leora and Adam, both break their gender roles, and their roles are somewhat reversed as Adam becomes more reliant on Leora than the other way around. Leora is a much stronger and more athletic character whereas Adam is very much a relatable, typical boy of his age, but does become very useful to Leora as he knows the city very well and can help her with more ordinary day to day tasks. Their two characters delve into a romantic relationship although this is not the main plot to the story, it does make them more relatable and love is a universal theme and will therefore appeal to a larger audience. In The Hunger Games, Katinss and Peeta have a relationship very much similar to that of Leora and Adam, proving to be full of challenges along the way.

5. How Did You Attract/Address Your Audience?

To address our target audience we had to consider Katz and Blulmer Uses and Gratifications theory, which outlines what an audience look for when watching a film.

Informing




We attempted to express towards our secondary, female audience the positivity of female characters. With the inclusion of a strong, athletic and intelligent heroine we were able to show that women can positive characters which is very important for a large proportion of females in society. This evidently worked as a large percentage of the people who viewed the opening were female.







Entertaining



We used a number of different sci-fi conventions to entertain the audience. Straight away, we began with a chase scene, immediately engaging the audience by throwing them into the action. This has a number of effects. Firstly, it excites them as, since they came to see an action film, action is the first thing they want to see and this is given to them with the immediate chase and fight scene. Secondly, this instant chase builds suspense and curiosity, pressing them to continue watching in order to find out more. Again, it is evident that this desired outcome was what really happened, with 100% of the audience surveyed said they would continue watching the remainder of the film.





Escapism

The high level of fiction and lack of reality in the scene, for example the inclusion of time travel allows the audience to escape from their own lives for the duration of the film. This lack of relation to real life means their thoughts are on the world in the filming meaning they are lost in the film.


Personal Identity

The  audience want to relate to the characters of the film to make it easier to be immersed into the story and empathise with the characters. This was possible, especially for the female audience, since they can look at Leora in a positive light and aspire to have themselves in her position with her abilities.

There were also some other ways that we attracted the audience:

Build up of enigma and tension

With the apparent disappearance of Leora and appearance in a whole new time, as well as the enigma of the character of the Henchman, the audience begin to ask themselves questions like who? How? And Why? This continuous questioning of the goings on of the sequence makes the audience want to continue and have these questions answered.

Continuity

Throughout our opening sequence we insure there was continuity. This was done with techniques like the 180 degree rule (ensuring the camera is always on one side of the action) and match on action, shown below. This allowed the audience to follow and understand the scene without becoming confused of where the characters were running and who was chasing who, as well as not allowing them to spot obvious mistakes, meaning they are able to focus on the story and not the editing and camera work.

Genre

The genre of our film is set out from the very beginning of the film opening this means that the audience immediately know what kind of film to expect. This grabs their attention as soon as the film starts.

I spoke to a 22 year old male about the opening sequence and the film and documented his responses.

He easily identified the title of the film, as well as the sci-fi action genre, a good sign. Not only did he notice this but he also understood that the theme of the sequence and film in general was time travel. This means that we successfully carried out the functions of the opening sequence (mentioned in question 1). He also mentioned that not only does it introduce the themes, setting and characters but also leaves a lot to be discovered, making him want to watch the rest of the film to find out these things.

He also identified himself as part of the young adult core audience, however, he named, not only males, but also females. This is proof that the inclusion of a female protagonist to attract females worked as a method of gaining female interest.

Below are some more graphs from our survey that show the general audience views on our opening, as well as their general film preferences.

As you can see, the majority of our viewers were action fans and were 16-19. This means that we have correctly marketed our film and have appealed to the primary audience that we attempted to target. Also with the majority of viewers rating our film 4 or 5 out of 5, it is clear that we properly researched the audience and included what they wanted to see from the genre.

2) How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

Our media product represents men and women through our use of characters, as shown below:

We feel that our film breaks stereotypes about female characters in action and sci-fi films, yet can still appeal to both male and female sci-fi and action fans as both genders are represented positively by some aspects of our film.

5) How Did You Attract/Address Your Audience?

The Katz & Blumler Uses and Gratifications Theory was the most useful theory that we used to attract and address our audience. By using this theory, we aimed to appeal to the widest possible audience.

RELATIONSHIPS
The relationship between the characters and the audience and the relationship between the characters themselves is what interests the audience. The fact that Leora is seen as a vulnerable yet fighting character make the audience like her. This also means they feel more sympathy towards her as their relationship is stronger, therefore it affects them if Leora is in trouble or is hurt. The fact that the person causing her distress is the villain who is hated also increases the strength of the relationship between Leora and the audience.

Leora shown to be a fighting character 

ENTERTAINMENT

The device Leora is seen to be holding

There are many aspects of our film opening that we incorporated to entertain the audience. Firstly the film opens with a running scene, throwing the audience into the action and immediately engaging them. The audience have no idea what is happening or why and curiosity makes them want to find out. I order to do this they much watch further. After this initial scene, the action slows down, and we notice Leora holding a device. The dialogue between the characters reveals a bit about the narrative, but still manages to maintain a sense of mystery. After the dialogue is interrupted by the unknown device we decided to include another running scene to pick up the pace of the opening again. This leads nicely to the final shot, where Leora time travels, and the audience see the device being used, but are again thrown into a sense of unknowing as to where Leora has jumped to.

Leora time travelling

INFORMING
Although our film has no underlying morals you could say that we attempted to show our secondary audience (young women) that women can be strong and intelligent yet still desirable. We hoped to do this by having Leora as the inventor of the time device, and having a female protagonist in an action film, breaking the convention of having male heroes.

IDENTITY
Female audience members can relate to the character Leora and see themselves in the film. For example, Leora presents women as strong and intelligent., and the audience can look up to her as a role model because of this.

ESCAPISM
Our film provides a chance for the audience to escape from their own lives, as it involves fictitious elements, such as time travel. They feel immersed in the story and so can forget about other worries or troubles in their life and relax.

Members of my group conducted a survey using the web app survey monkey. The results showed that the majority of those watching the clip were female, and that they understood the genre and narrative, which means that we managed to create an effective opening, and that we managed to attract the desired audience.

These results were surprising as we intended to appeal equally to the male and female audience, although this could be down to the fact that the majority of people who filled out the survey just happened to be female. 

The results for this question show that we managed to clearly portray the genre of our film as sci-fi, and the few that answered in the action/adventure section noticed what our sub genre was. Overall, the feedback for this question was in line with our expectations.   

The fact that 100% of our audience would watch our film after viewing the opening means that our intentions to grip and engage the audience to a point of curiosity were successful. This is mainly because we made the narrative quite simple and not have any underlying political or moral messages as to appeal to the general audience. 

3) What Kind Of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Media Product And Why?

We decided that our film would be a co-production, between our British production company - HK Productions - and Moving Picture Company and Warner Brothers.

We decided to do co-production, as many popular British franchises have also had co-production between a British production company and a larger studio - Harry Potter, for example, was produced by HeyDay and Moving Picture Company, and presented by Warner Bros. 

Warner Bros. are experienced in distributing films of similar genres, meaning our film is more likely to reach the target audience, as well as being marketed to a broader audience.

As our film is a studio production, there would be a large budget available for marketing and distribution. This means that above- and below-the-line marketing can be used, and mainstream cinema chains would distribute our film.

Examples of some of the online marketing for Gravity

For our film specifically, we would market to the UK in a number of ways:

• have a poster campaign, with posters shown in the Underground and on the sides of buses
• have the stars of the franchise appear for interviews on popular chat shows, such as Graham Norton and Chatty Man, which appear on mainstream television channels (BBC1, for example). Interviews in daily newspapers, such as The Metro, will also reach commuters and raise awareness about the film.
• TV trailers will be shown before popular television shows, such as The X Factor (a popular reality show which targets our core audience - 16-25 year olds) which is on ITV1, a mainstream channel.
• The theatrical trailer will be shown before films of a similar genre, or those with a similar core audience
• An official website not only reaches UK audiences, but international audiences too. This will have many features, such as behind the scenes pictures, stills from the film, videos (such as the trailers), or a game, for example, to make it more interactive and appealing to more tech-savvy audiences
• Social networking sites reach UK audiences and international audiences - a Twitter page will update fans on any news or competitions, for example, and a Facebook page will also provide behind the scenes images, sneak peaks and updates

The film would be released in August, as this is when our core audience will have summer holidays, and therefore time and incentive to see the film. This is also similar to Gravity, which was released on August 19th 2013. 

The film will be in all cinema chains, such as Vue or Cineworld, for 2 months to start with, which can be extended if the film does well in the box office. If the film does well in the UK, it can then be released internationally, for the same period of time in the cinema chains worldwide.

3) What Kind Of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Media Product And Why?

Our film is a British studio production and so we have chosen a British production company to produce the film with financial support and funding from a large Hollywood studio.

We created our own independent production company - HK Productions as they will have expertise in understanding the British market. HK Productions is well suited to working on our film Quantum as their UK offices will make organising and filming much easier. 

We have chosen to collaborate with MPC (Moving Pictures Company) - a creative studio that craft spectacular visual experiences on screen. They are one of the global leaders in visual effects for more than 25 years with industry-leading facilities across the globe, including facilities in London - well suited to our film.

Some of MPC's most famous projects include major blockbusters like the Harry Potter franchise, Life Of Pi, X-Men, Prometheus and Man Of Steel.

MPC were honoured to receive an Oscar nomination for their work on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 at the 83rd Annual Academy Awards.

David Yates directed Harry Potter’s latest outing, the first part of the seventh installment ‘The Deathly Hallows’ produced by Warner Bros.  MPC completed over 180 shots bringing Nagini to life, creating digi-doubles for the polyjuice transformation sequence and carrying out extensive environment work

MPC’s main areas of work included creating two massive storm sequences: the sinking of Pi’s cargo ship The Tsimtsum, and the Storm of God, the dramatic climax to Pi’s journey aboard his marooned lifeboat. Other work included animating over 20 panicked animals aboard the sinking ship, creating a CG lizard, hornbill and Cassowaries for the opening titles and the first shots of Pi leaving India on board The Tsimtsum.

From the early stages of planning, we diced that Warner Bros. would be an ideal distributor for our film Quantum. They are one of the world's leading international distributors, this is good for our film as they can help it to reach a worldwide audience. Warner Bros. have lots of expertise and experience in distributing sci-fi and action films. Some of the most well-known films they have distributed include Harry Potter, Inception and Gravity.

They have also distributed The Dark Knight Rises and Slumdog Millionaire. 

                     

The film would be released during the summer months when our core age group audience will be off of school/university for their summer holidays. Early August would be an ideal time to release the film as it would mean that the first month of the film's screenings in cinemas would be during a period where a large amount of our key audience will be free; making the cinema an incentive for friends to go to in groups, increasing the ticket sales.

In the UK, the film would be mainly released in large cinema chains such as Odeon and Vue - appealing to a large scale, mainstream audience in cities and towns across the UK. After it's release in the UK, we are hoping for a successful international release, especially in the United States where there is a large appeal for a sci-fi/action film such as this. The Warner Bros. studios in the US would also help to promote and distribute the film over there too. To do this, US specific Twitter and Facebook pages would be created to target the core American audience specifically, reaching out to young Americans through social networking sites. And much like the British marketing approach; posters, billboards, trailers and TV appearances would be used to aid the marketing and promotion of the film to a wide audience, upon it's US release date.

6) What Have You Learnt About Technologies From The Process Of Constructing This Product?

Here is a list of the technologies we used for the production of our film opening, and how we learnt how to use them to get the desired effect.

CAMERA
For the camera we used the Canon HV30, a small handheld mini DV recorder. Because the camera is so compact it meant that we were able to transport it from location to location. This was especially good for us seeing as some of our locations were quite far apart. The handheld aspect also meant that it was easy to manoeuvre and so we were able to get shots that would otherwise be impossible with a heavier, larger camera. Using these cameras was a hard task for me, as I know that the camera I personally have is better. However, I did discover that it's more about the content of your shot rather than the quality that has the larger effect on the result, although quality does help.

MICROPHONE

For the recording of the sound we used a standard shotgun mic. This was set to stereo and meant that not only was the audio quality better, but could be picked up from a further distance. The part of the microphone we found useful was the windshield, as this meant that the wind from being outside was not picked up on the audio. I did discover the difference of not using one in some of the shots where dialogue or sound was not needed, in which the audio was crackly and the wind was buffeting the built in mic to a point where the we cut out the audio from the clip because it was so distracting for the viewer. I didn't realise before then how important sound quality was for suspending disbelief. 

TRIPOD

Generally we used the tripod normally, using it to make shots such as the dialogue between the two characters still and also the pan shots steady. However we had some more unconventional uses for it, for example we used the tripod to raise the camera when filming the over the shoulder shots of the henchman and also as a counterbalance when filming the chase scenes. As a group, later in the editing process we realised how important it was to keep the camera still for shots of dialogue as it was incredibly distracting to have the camera move during a shot where you were meant to be focusing on dialogue. 

PREMIERE PRO CS5

For our film opening we used premiere pro to edit and grade our opening sequence. For the editing, we utilised the program's tools available to us, the razor tool and magnetic timeline feature for example, and learnt how to use them effectively in order to create continuity and smooth transitions between shots. After completing the final edit, we graded all of the shots using procamp and the three way colour corrector, which we also had to learn how to use. 

AFTER EFFECTS CS5

Our group, having a large amount of special effects due to the genre of our film, had to use After Effects a lot in the production of our opening. After learning how to manage the software we then went about using it to create our desired product.

We had to cut out out Leora from the background so that she looked liked she completely disappeared when teleporting. We used the pen tool to manoeuvre fixed points to cut out Leora's shape exactly.

We managed to use a small green screen and tracking points to impose an image onto the device Leora uses to time travel. The image was created on Photoshop, edited so that it moved in order to make it appear more realistic, then converted to a GIF.

The future skyline for the shot when Leora time travels was also done in After Effects. We sourced images of alien ships and futuristic transporters, scaled them down and then made them move across the skyline in order to make it more obvious that the year was not 2014.

Over the course of this project, I would say our group managed to grasp a basic understanding of how after effects is used and also the amount of time that is required in order to get something to a good enough standard in order to suspend the audiences disbelief. Certain members already had this level of understanding for programmes such as photoshop and premiere pro from Media GCSE, but now I would confidently say we are all capable.

FACEBOOK
Our group used Facebook to communicate and share ideas outside of school hours. Things such as location and costume were organised on the private group we had created. Members of the group could post pictures or links which the whole group could access and comment on. I would say that communicating outside of lessons helped a lot with organisation and preparation so therefore it plays a vital part in any film process, no matter which way you go about it. 

4) Who Would Be The Audience For Your Media Product?

Audience

The core audience for our film is British 16-25 year old male and female action and sci-fi fans. Our film would appeal to this group especially because of the nature of the themes in our film such as romance, action and all of the effects such as explosions and time travelling. This age group make up over a quarter of cinema-goers in the UK, according to BFI Yearbook Statistcs. The overall audience for the top 20 and top UK films in 2012 had a slight bias towards males who made up 52% of total cinema-goers for these top films, lots of which were of the action genre.

This chart shows the percentage of the audiences of each of these films that were in the 15-24 age group, very similar to our core audience group. The Hunger Games was one of the films that we used as reference and inspiration for our own film and has as similar audience. 47% of the audience for The Hunger Games was young people from the ages of 15 to 24. This highlights the importance of this age group to cinema, especially for action and sci-fi films.

Secondary audience:

The seconfor our film is young women who look up to and aspire to inherit traits similar to those of our heroine. Our protagonist Leora is a strong female character, who is also relatable as she falls into a relationship with another main character Adam.

Films that our target audience are likely to have watched and enjoyed:

LOOPER

PACIFIC RIM

INCEPTION

In general, our core audience would be fans of the majority of blockbuster action and sci-fi films, like those mentioned above, and others like Die Hard and Alien. Other films that would appeal to our secondary audience are films with strong female protagonists like The Hunger Games and Pacific Rim. Our audience may also be fans of video games, like Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed and Lara Croft.

The film would appeal to a global audience as the themes of love, action and sci-fi are universal and the dialogue isn't too complicated for lots of the action scenes. However, the film was made in the UK so we made it with UK audiences in mind, using London as a setting and English accents for the majority of the characters. In the opening scene you can see London is used as a background, the skyline is visible in the distance in the all-important first time travelling scene.

 We chose to base it in London as it would attract a London-based audience. London audiences made up 25% of cinema admissions in the UK in 2012.

5) How Did You Attract/Address Your Audience?

To attract and address our audience we used the Uses and Gratifications Theory as we aimed to appeal to the broadest audience possible. The theory outlines what it is that audiences are interested in when watching a film. 

Informing The Audience: We wanted to show to our secondary audience of young women that it was possible to have both strong and desirable traits. To do this, we created the character Leora who was our female protagonist. She was the inventor of the time device which showed her intelligence, her athleticism and strength is shown throughout the film when she has to fight and escape from the grasps of Synergy, and she is still portrayed as a desirable female character as she pursues a romantic relationship with Adam. We believe that this portrayal of women in a positive light worked well, as over 80% of the audience who watched the film upon it's opening were female.

 (Click on the image for a more detailed view of the statistics, to give you a better understanding of why it was so important for us to have a secondary audience of young women.)

Entertaining The Audience: It was important for us to grab the attention of the audience in the opening to our film so we began the opening sequence with a fast-paced chase scene to engage the audience from the outset. The fight scene in the beginning of the film was a typical action genre convention, it adds excitement and suspense, involving the audience as they decide who they want to win. The chase scene also builds up suspense and tension, drawing the audience into the film and making them interested in the story and the relationship between the two characters on screen - why is she being chased? - who is chasing her? -
where will she end up?

The survey we took showed that 100% of the audience that took the survey, said that they would continue to watch the rest of the film - this showed us that our opening had been successful in attracting the audience.

Escapism: 

Quantum provides a hyper-realistic environment for the audience as they watch the film, immersing them into a fictional world of cinema. The inclusion of time travel in this obviously fictional film provides a means of escape for the audience as they watch the film. The audience get lost within this world we have created in our film, involving themselves with the characters and the story line, this suspension of belief will create a topic of discussion amongst audience members who are then likely to talk about the film to friends and family, or even make comments about it on social media; further spreading the word about the film.

 This graph shows that over 90% of the audience who took the survey were between the ages of 16-19; fitting into our core target age category of 16-24s.

A survey taken on SurveyMonkey which shows the percentage
of the audience who understood the narrative of the opening

 The graph to the right, shows that every member of the audience who took the survey understood the narrative of the opening to the film. This is important because if the audience don't understand the opening, they will be less interested in watching the rest of the film.



















Genre:
This graph shows that the audience who took the survey understood that the film they were watching was sci-fi/action. This is important as we wouldn't want to draw the wrong audience into the film under the wrong impression of what genre the film would be. Every single answer given on the survey was for either sci-fi or action. The film is predominantly a sci-fi and over 80% of the responses said that the film was sci-fi, showing that the genre was shown clearly in the opening.

 


Below are some other graphs taken from our survey conducted on surveymonkey.com that highlight where our audience members are from - mostly from the UK, and what their favourite genre of films are too.

A graph showing the results from a survey of audience members, when asked where they were from.

This graph shows that over 90% of the audience members who took the survey were from the United Kingdom; the main reason for this would be that the survey was shared over Facebook on a British profile, therefore attracting a larger number of British responses.

This graph shows the answers given by audience members when asked what their favourite film genre was.

This graph is interesting as it has a lot of various answers. This shows that the audience members who took the survey, all like different film genres, yet when referring to the other graph results, they all enjoyed our film opening. This is a good example of why action/sci-fi films are so universally succesful; they appeal to a large audience, all of whom like different genres.

Identity:

The female members of the audience can identify with the character Leora, the protagonist of the film. Leora presents women in a positive light, as a smart and independent girl who can be looked up to by young girls in the audience.

Personal Relationships:
After watching the film, the audience will hopefully be keen to talk to their friends and family about the film, fulfilling the person's need for friendship, as well as allowing the film to be a topic of conversation among strangers, giving people a chance to form new relationships and friendships, this could also be done online with the use of Web 2.0 - fans of the sci-fi/action genre can interact and talk to each other via forums and fan pages about the films that they enjoy.