Archie Edmonds AS Media

Question 1:

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

Narrative

Todorov's Narrative Theory

We looked at Todorov's narrative theory whilst planning our film opening . This is reflected in our film as it does largely conform to Todorov's narrative theory except for the ending. We started the film with an equilibrium and ended with a resolution opposed to the normal new equilibrium. A diagram of our narrative structure can be shown again.

Narrative theory for Project X (2012) compared to The eZ Life:

Levi-Strauss Theory Of Binary Opposites

In The eZ Life we set up the following binary opposites:

Sad VS Happy
Good VS Evil

Vladimir Propp's Character Theory

Our characters on the whole do not conform to Prop's Character Theory. There are only two which do conform which are listed below:

False Hero: Drug Dealer
Hero: Zach

We did not include a Hero, Villain, Helper or Princess.

Enigma Codes

Our opening will lead to viewers questioning things such as:

How did the pill with the effect of turning people into Zombies emerge on the black market?
How will the riots that take place after the party be dealt with?
Are there many of the pills left?
How long will the Zombie effect last on those who took the drug?

Semiotic Codes

Connor's stance and head movement show that he is under the influence of drink/drugs.

The speed of the money and drugs changing hands show the nervousness of Zach

The fist bump between Zach and Connor shows the elation of Zach after taking the 'eZ' pill

The enlargement of the eye pupil symbolizes the drug taking that happens in our film

Genre

Soundtrack:

Question 2:

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our opening sequence we focused on the representation of drug users and British teenagers. We largely conformed to stereotypes, however some things were challenged in our opening.

Drug Use:

To show how we represented drug use in our main character Zach, I have created a character profile:

Age:

Age was a hugely significant representation for us to focus on. This was because our target audience is largely teenagers and young adults. Therefore it was vital we didn't portray teenagers in a condescending way and showed something they can identify with. At various points in our film opening the representation of teenagers conforms to that which is commonly seen. As you can see from the examples below:

Superbad party scene

The eZ Life party scene

We also represented a middle aged male in our film opening. To make it as obvious as possible that the character was a news reader we decided to conform with the archetypal news reader. An example of this can be seen below:

Archetypal male news reader (ITN)

Male news reader in The eZ Life

In conclusion in terms of age we generally conformed to stereotypes. In some cases such as the news reader we used archetypes to make the character's role obvious.

Question 3:

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

What does a Production Company do?

A Production Company essentially creates the film. It does this by marketing, budgeting, casting and by turning the idea and bringing it to life. It looks over the film from when it was just an idea to the final product. On a large scale film then there is more money needed in order to create the film e.g. the big six production companies.

However for a lower scale film such as our film the eZ life very little money is needed. This is why some production companies are more successful than others. In our film our production companies that we used are shown below.

We created a film production logo 'I SEE FIRE PRODUCTIONS' and 'DNA Productions' which we created individually. We then chose the best designs of the logos which then featured into our film.

They are both British, Independent and they specialise in producing high quality, low budget films.

In our film we also used Film 4 Production company this was a difficult process to choose as we had other potential distributors which could have distributed our film as shown below.

The Marketing campaign for our film:

Our film has a relatively low budget as it has small production companies at which specialise in producing high quality low budget films. To advertise our film we could use a variety of low budget marketing ideas. Our film has a wide target audience however we have mainly targeted 16-30 years old's and mainly a male film. We feel this as our film is similar to other films which have targeted this age group such as Zombieland.

We could advertise our film online through various websites such as YouTube at which we could upload a trailer of our film such as various other films have done. This is a good way of advertising as millions of people now use online websites especially YouTube which has millions of viewers. Zombieland for example also uploaded a trailer online onto YouTube.

We could advertise our film by placing posters in well known locations and at bus stops and on the sides of buses as shown below. This is a good way of advertising as it will catch the attention of people in certain locations which could then create more people coming to our film. In certain locations such a london millions of people can see the posters as shown below.

This is a relatively cheap method of advertisement as the poster does not cost a lot of money however to get to the prime locations it is more expensive such as at a bus stop we must pay to place our poster there.

We could use various social networking websites such as Facebook and twitter as it is a relatively cheap way method of advertising and it can reach a wide number of people at a click of a button. With millions of people using social networking sites it will reach a huge amount of people. Below is an example of what our twitter profile and advertising will be.

Question 4:

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Films that have similar target audiences to The eZ Life:

Project X has a core audience of British and American teenagers

Zombieland has a core audience of American, male teenagers

Primary audience for The eZ Life:

Gender: Male
Age: 16 - 25
Nationality: British
Interests: going to parties, listening to rap/house music, enjoys films full of thrills/suspense,
Favourite films: Project X, Zombieland, Superbad, Pulp Fiction, Requiem For A Dream

Visual representation of our primary audience

Secondary audience for The eZ Life:

Gender: Female

Age: 16 - 25

Nationality: British

Interests: going to parties, listening to rap/house music, enjoys films full of thrills/suspense,

Favourite Films: Project X, Zombieland, Superbad, Requiem For A Dream

Visual representation of our secondary audience

Examples of our target audience from our feedback:

As a part of question five we asked as many people as possible to answer feedback forms we created. Below are two responses which show almost exactly who we were targeting in both our primary and secondary audience.

Primary Audience Example

Secondary Audience Example

Question 5:

How did you attract / address your audience?

Audience Feedback:
After our film we created a questionnaire and got a selection of people to watch our film and give us feedback. The questionnaire answers are below. We received some good feedback and also some feedback which we did not want to see as shown below.

This was our feedback session where we invited people in to watch our film and then answer a small questionnaire

This is an overview of our questionnaire and the answers

The majority of the viewers were aged between 16-24 years of age which is primarily our target audience although our film has a wide target audience.

This showed that although most people enjoyed our film opening some people were confused. This however could be seen as a positive as our idea was to make sure that we created an enigma for our audience members. On the other hand this could be seen as people might have misunderstood the storyline which we did not particularly want.

90% of our viewers said that would want to carry on watching the film, this means that a high majority of the viewers liked the opening and wanted to see more of the film itself.

This is a split decision between our audience members and this means that some things they did not like about our film opening, such as one comment was saying the time lapse did not make sense. However we felt as though this was quite clear to see the transformation.

The genders were exactly half which this now determines whether our target research was correct or not. This can then determine views from both genders about the film and receive a wider range of feedback.

This was a clear decision that our genre was evident and this also shows that our storyline was understood. This is a large majority of people that watched the opening and that knew the genre was clear.

90% of our viewers enjoyed our film opening and only 10% of our viewers disliked the film opening this shows that had attracted the audiences attention. This shows that our film may have potential if it was released on a large scale.

A large majority of people could clearly see that our film was an opening sequence however one person saw the film opening as a trailer at which we did not want to see. However the majority of people could tell that it was an opening sequence.