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

After reviewing our previous attempt at creating a media project, compared to our more recent product, it’s evident that we have become more aware of the framing aspect of our shots. Below is a selection of screenshots from both projects, and the contrast of this improvement is significantly apparent.

There is also a significant development between the preliminary task and the main project, in reference to the variety of shots that we have captured, and the angles in which we have used.

The lighting of the set was another aspect which I think we have improved upon.

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

12.5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

The unique selling point (USP) of our film, Relapse, is the fast-paced action and violence that most British films wouldn’t usually feature; this is more conventional in American films. Our idea to use the ending of the film at the beginging could also be considered to be a unique selling point, due to the fact that it creates a sense of mystery around the intentions are reasoning behind the character’s actions. This could potentially attract the audience to continue watching the film to establish why these events occurred. 

Our audience feedback was relatively positive as they appreciated the variety of camera angles that we used to present the running sequence. When viewing our rough cut, our audience didn’t respond well to the silent opening as they weren’t aware as to whether the film had started, and they weren’t keen on name of the film. We have since rectified these issues to provide the audience with the most successful version possible.

12.4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for our film, Relapse, is primarily middle aged, white British males aged between 22 and 50 years. Considering the fact that our film is categorised as crime genre film, I think that this will attract an older audience as it could be more suited to the more mature generation due to the fact that there could be swearing or violence in the film. I think it will also be more appealing to the working class people, as opposed to middle class people as it isn’t the most intellectual film within the market, however, this doesn’t apply to everyone.

The epitome of our target audience is Charlie Davies:

A production company is a company that is responsible for the physical production of a media product and they may also be directly responsible for funding the production.

The production company that we chose to use was entitled Kings Langley Productions, and we specialise in crime genre films. Our film, Relapse, is a middle age crime film – we have incorporated our knowledge of crime genre films with our understanding of the media consumption of a stereotypical middle-aged man to create this niche, British film. A similar British production company is Coffee Films who commonly produce feature and short films. Coffee Films are renowned for filming with a limited budget and, like Coffee Films; we are aiming to reach an audience who are interested in the crime genre, at the same sort of age.

Our film focuses on the lives of men who have resorted to crime due to a financial strain, and it attempts to convey the hardship that they are experiencing as a result of this with some fast paced action scenes. Consequently, I think that our film could attract a Hollywood company who could distribute a crime genre film, because their target audiences, or audiences that recognise their brand name, are similar to ours.

A distribution company could be involved even during the scriptwriting, as they could analyse the text and suggest whether there is a market for such a media product. The MGM Company have distributed films such as, Another Thin Man, The Beast of the City amongst numerous other crime genre films. The MGM Company is experienced in distributing media products to their target audience which is also comprised of primarily middle aged men, as opposed to teenagers or an older generation.

On the other hand, Contender Films, who have experience in distributing media products to both cinemas and on DVD, is a British distribution company which have also released crime genre films. They have recently been acquired by the Entertainment One Company which consequently resulted in an increase of funding available and are also linked to other companies which would aid them during the distributing process to a larger audience.

These are the types of companies that we would consider if we were going to distribute our media project due to the fact that they have knowledge of the crime genre, subsidiaries which could expand our audience and have generated a fan base which is similar to the audience which our film could appeal to.

12.2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

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

Upon reflection over our title sequence, we were required to consider how our media product used, developed and challenged the forms and conventions of real media products.

Based on my previous research into the common conventions of crime genre films, using websites such as http://www.filmsite.org/genres.html and other sources, it’s evident that our title sequence has numerous traditional elements. This is apparent due to the fact that our title sequence introduces the key characters with a mysterious non-diegetic audio track which generates an atmosphere, and a sense of limited time and dialogue, similarly to the title sequences of the films Pulp Fiction, The Dark Knight and Goodfellas.

However, the format in which our title sequence portrays these elements is quite direct, where as other crime genre films such as Pulp Fiction display a more discrete approach by separating the action, dialogue and introduction of the characters from the titles, and the mysterious audio track. We decided against this style due to the fact that we thought including the titles with the action could encourage the audience to maintain an interest and also make the text relevant. Although, we thought that the use of computer generated text created a surreal aspect and separated the physical appearance of the text from the action, similarly to Pulp Fiction.

In order to maintain this interest, we thought it would be beneficial to introduce the main characters during the title sequence, because this could set up the dynamics between those characters and immediately inform the audience about the relationship between these characters. But by limiting the amount of dialogue, we were also able to create a sense of mystery about the intentions of these characters - a common convention in the crime genre.  

The structure of our sequence could be considered to be subversive due to the fact that the title of our film is displayed towards the end of the title sequence, where as the title for Goodfellas and Pulp Fiction is revealed in the middle of the sequence, and The Dark Knight’s title is shown at the beginning. The reasoning behind this decision was based on an original idea that the gunshot at the end would be followed by the title, which could delegate emphasis towards the title by creating a more dramatic effect. We also decided to order the sequence of events in a linear format, similarly to that of Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction and The Dark Knight, as we thought this would enable the audience to follow the sequence of events more clearly.

The presentation of these titles is parallel to other crime film opening sequences as both Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas use a smart and clear font for their titles, such as Times New Roman, which is similar to the font that our group used for our titles. The color of the font is white, which is the same color as the font in the Goodfella's title sequence. The reason we decided to conform to this style was because we thought that the contrast of white text against the black background was more visually effective. The fact that we used black backgrounds, however, is an element frequently used in crime genre films such as Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas and The Dark Knight. In reference to the style of text and the color used; our title sequence conforms to the common conventions of a crime genre film.

The main enigma of our opening sequence is the mystery of the intentions and actions of the main characters. We decided to limit the amount that we would reveal about the reasoning behind what is happening on screen, as this is a common feature in numerous other crime genre opening sequences.  We also used music to create a dynamic scene in the hope that the audience would maintain an interest and desire to discover what happens in the following film. This method is also used constantly in our chosen genre based on our conventional research.

As a group, we thought it would be more visually appealing if our title sequence was in color, as opposed to black and white which is generally classed as the traditional presentation of a crime genre film. We also thought that the concepts and issues raised within the plot were quite current and the color format could reflect that. This idea was derived from the film ‘Trainspotting’, which tackles similar issues such as drug abuse, in a color format. We shot our title sequence in 4:3; however, this should have been 16:9. This was an error that we made during the filming process and we contemplated rectifying this problem by cropping the shots to appear letter-headed, but we felt this didn’t justify cutting out some of the action on screen.

Within our opening sequence we used a range of close ups shots of the character’s faces whilst they were running, to convey the frantic emotions that they were experiencing. We also focused on building the foundations for the film, by capturing a shot of one of our characters crying so the audience could begin to share empathy. We also concentrated on the legs by using close up shots of the characters running, to highlight the importance of the amount of motion taking place. We also decided to incorporate long shots to enable us to capture both characters at once, and illustrate the distance between these characters - all elements that are commonly associated with the crime genre.

To create our title sequence, we used a compilation of different camera angles, as we were impressed by the variety of shots depicted in the opening chase scene of TrainSpotting. We attempted to conform to the conventions of a crime genre by tracking the character’s while they were running, as seen in the title sequence of TrainSpotting. However, due to limited resources and the fact that we decided to improvise with a skateboard, this attempt wasn’t as successful as we thought it would have been..

We thought that our characters should be in smart attire, such as suits, similarly to the clothing worn in the film Reservoir Dogs, and should be wielding guns as their props due to the fact that this is a popular convention in crime films.

The film Trainspotting was quite influential, in reference to the editing and sound, due to the fact that our title sequence also consists of fast paced transitions, with an equally fast sound track to match the action displayed on screen, which could potentially create a tense and exciting atmosphere – the main objective of any crime genre film. We decided to conform to this convention as we thought that this could set the mood for the audience so that they can share the fear of the main characters and the tension between them. We also derived the idea of initiating the sound at the same moment that the main character’s foot made contact with the floor from Trainspotting, as we found that this was more effective method of introducing the audio track.

We decided against the use of any special effects as the majority of crime genre films that we studied seem to avoid this surreal element during their title sequences.

Over all, it is evident that our media product rarely challenges the conventions of a crime genre film, and opts for a more conformable approach which could offer our product a more successful future, if it contains elements of original media products that have been successful within such an industry.

Audience Response

After reviewing our title sequence, the target audience explained that their expectations of a crime genre title sequence were exceeded as they stated that our group “did it justice”. It also became apparent that the pace was successfully captured due to a variety of shots depicting the motion of the characters and that this pace was paralleled by the music effectively. They thought that the abrupt titles also continued to generate this pace and suited the genre.

However, they thought that the shot of Liam running wasn’t as successful due to the fact that the camera tilted towards an awkward angle which was the result of improvising with a skate board as a make-shift camera dolly.

The target audience also provided suggestions for our untitled project, such as “Chase” which was a simple, yet direct suggestion for our title, considering the title sequence is primarily composed of a chase scene. They also proposed we title it “Relapse” to emphasize the drug abuse theme which is apparent throughout the film, and this would also make the title more relevant by combining the content of the film with the title which could provide future, potential viewer’s with a greater insight into the film before they watch it.

As a group, we also generated various questions which we thought would evoke a constructive response from our target audience. These are the questions that we used, and the format that we presented them in:

These were the results that we derived from the questions within this survey:

Based on these results, we were able to conclude that our title sequence was recognized as a crime genre by 70% of our audience and the remaining 30% acknowledged other aspects of our title sequence which could be misconstrued as a convention of a thriller or action genre. We also established that the majority were able to understand and follow the sequence of events, and these events also encapsulated the majority of our audience.

However, the results based on the suitability of our audio were relatively successful, but this was still significantly lower than the previous results which suggests that this is an aspect which we could improve upon.

Final Title Sequence

This is the product of our title sequence media project, entitled Relapse. However, due to the compression rates on YouTube, our video is out of sync with the audio, but our teacher will send a synchronized copy.

Post-Production

To begin the editing process, we logged the rushes by reviewing each shot and deciding which take would be the most successful in comparison to the surrounding shots. We recorded these decisions in a table format with the correlating timings of the starting and finishing point of each shot, regardless of whether we were going to use it or not to ensure that we had a clear understanding of which clips to use during the editing process. We also included a description of what the clip consisted of, as well as the scene and shot number to further solidify our certainty of selecting the correct clip when editing. Evidently, this process consumed a significant amount of our time, but beneficially decreased the amount of time spent selecting the appropriate clips whilst editing.

This prolonged process then enabled our group to accurately begin constructing our title sequence. We began by dragging the rushes onto the timeline of the video editing software, Adobe Premiere Pro. We arranged the shots according to the order of the shot list and reduced various clips to ensure the continuity was consistent throughout, which was especially effective in maintaining the match-on-action whilst the characters were running.

After these adjustments, we included the stereotypical titles of a crime genre title sequence. This consisted of the actors, directors and writers names, as well our production company and the school's title to illustrate the collaboration.

Once we were satisfied with the visual aspect of our title sequence, we began to adjust the audio levels by increasing and decreasing the sound created within the shots to suit the action depicted. We achieved this by creating a marker on the area of audio which required an adjustment, then raised or lowered this point accordingly.

As a group, we then used the website www.incomputech.com to select an appropriate, track that wasn’t copyrighted to generate the pace or a crime genre title sequence. Finally, we asked our target group to review our refined title sequence and generate some feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of our product.