Evaluation: Finished Film

This is our finalised opening scene to our movie Ruthless Russians.

Planning: Preliminary Coursework

Evaluation: Shane Fitzpatrick Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The story starts out with an ordinary man walking across the street with a suspicious looking bag, he puts the bag down and walks around the corner to do his business. As he is doing this, a mysterious man comes along while playing a friendly game to show he has no intention of hurting someone. However, he finds a bag on the ground and noticed that there was "a whole lot of money" and decides take it for himself. At that point, the viewers will notice that it is a crime thriller from the theft. This type of thriller can be compared to The Godfather. How there is a protagonist and an antagonist with a rivalry against each other with henchmen to do things for them.
As for the camera shots, we used some POV shots to include the viewer in this petty theft, make them feel apart of doing something wrong to build tension and a sense of Ideal I to show how much better of a person than that person is. The other were low and high angles, we made sure that the one that has the bag was the one with power, while the other who has lost the bag has lost all of that power, and even be punished for losing it.
The clothing of these characters were of an urban type of style, the criminal had the right haircut to play the part as a henchmen while the one taking the bag was wearing normal outdoor clothing, as if he didn't know he'll be this lucky. The scene was in an urban area making the clothing blend in with the atmosphere and the props that we used were made sure that it was of the urban style.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
There can be some representation about particular social groups in our film. For the main social group clearly seen in the film, their Ethnicity. The ethnicity that is indicated in the film would be Russian, you can tell this is Russian because of the accents of the three characters, (Bogdan, Viktor and Niko). The last character (Emmanuel) wasn't Russian at all, instead his ethnicity was african. this may be stereotypical towards black people as we have a black person stealing from white people which can cause problems in society. You can tell who is Russian and who isn't distinctly by their first names.

Another representation that has been considered was the area in which this was shot, the atmosphere was urban making it easier to find graffiti spots and abandoned alleyways. the location we went to was Brick Lane. This area had the buildings you would see in an atmosphere run by a mafia boss.
The class represented in this film would be lower and middle class. The protagonist would be the lower class seeing as he is the one to find and steal the money for himself, whereas the antagonists are middle class, this is because they are working under a vigilante boss who's goal is to get money from clients. Because of these crimes, they go down a class, but because they obtain a lot of money and fame in the area, they are not as low as the protagonist.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The media institution that might distribute my media product would probably be Paramount Pictures. The reason why i have chosen Paramount pictures is because they are one of the biggest movie production companies in America, who has also distributed "The Godfather", which we have taken influence from in our movie "Ruthless Russians"
Paramount Pictures are known to distribute lots of thrillers that, some being crime while the others are another specific genre of thriller. These films appeal to the teenage audience as they mostly have warfare between many different groups, teenagers also enjoy scenes to do with chasing and robberies. This is the reason why we would like to have Paramount pictures to distribute our product. We think that, because Judging from all of their top releases like Titanic which have given them at least 14 awards for.
Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for our Media Product would be the young european teen males. The reason for this is because the film consists of teens making the Ideal I suitable for the teens who are going to watch our film. The Ideal I would make the teens feel like they are in the film with POV shots included to get them to feel like they can do better that what the teenager in the film does. Meaning the film is portraying that it could be anyone who can stumble upon an item and are tempted to take with you. This film can be seen by a higher age group depending on their interest on small thievery.
How did you attract/address your audience?
The way we have attracted the audience was through social media and surveys. The survey we have used was on the website called SurveyMonkey, We have added at least 10 questions ranging from music to the clothing people enjoy, After we have made our survey, we have published it on facebook, one of the largest social medias. After a couple days, we have gotten the results and decided to interpret these answers in our film. Each of our 4 members spread them to our friends which then spread to their friends.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
One of the technologies that i have learnt a lot about was the functions of the camera, i was the camera man in my group so i had the most fun, from panning left to right to the many different camera shots. Each of the camera shots i have decided to put in was from the other crime films that i have seen recently, this made the camera shots placing quiet easy as i have seen how it works for certain scenes. However, the difficulty that i w

as having with the camera was the fact that it kept on shaking due to the coldness of my hands and the wind blowing at us. it took us many tries to get the camera to stay still. In the end, we managed to get every perfect shot there has to be for this film.
A second piece of technology was the software on the mac called Adobe premiere. With this software, we are able to combine all the scenes together and add transitions to connect them. At the end of it all, we have added the sound suitable in the background of each scene and added the end credits.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Back when i was doing my preliminary, i have learned that all camera shots have different purposes. The long shot to show the area, full shot for movement and a medium closeup to closeup for dialog. Other than the camera shots.
I thought walking through a door then pausing to start at the other side of the door was weird, but it all came to me when i was editing my preliminary. There was a tool in premiere to combine each of the clips together and merge the two clips of me with the door so it can look like i smoothly walked through the door.
The most important thing about making a film that i have learnt from the preliminary was the continuity needed to create a great film. To keep the continuity we had to keep the same props and clothing, the clothing was a problem for us at first, but we have decided to record everything in one day after all the fails in the past, only because we knew what we were doing after all the retakes. 

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

Evaluation: How We Attracted Our Target Audience

Evaluation: Who Would Be the Target Audience for Your Film?

To be honest, the region that our movie, Ruthless Russians is based upon would be in Russia. We thought of this because there are a large variety of Russian mafias included within video games and also in other films e.g, eastern promises.

The age for our target audience would be for people who are in their teens & young adults. This is because it contains elements of crime & action (asked in our survey) which they think the can relate to. This also an known as the Ideal I as the audience feels that they can associate with their behaviors with the characters of the movie. This was put forward by Sigmund Freud.

The gender isn't particularly focused onto either side. We had an all male group so we didn't really have a choice but to role with it. I would say this film would fit male audiences, we think this because this film is mostly about chasing and the main antagonist being part of a mafia. i feel like females would not be interested in these sort of genres but fit into more of the romance/comedy section.

As for the race, we made it stereotypical due to the fact that a black male is stealing from the Russian mafia, which are filled with white males. From our past research, we saw that many popular films include Stereotypes within them, so we try to include stereotypes in our film.

Overall, our main target audience are:
European Urban multicultural Teenage males.

Podcast: Evaluation - Shane

Construction: Reflections- What We Have Done So Far 3

So...
This is our last day of recording, all we have to do is record the phone scene between Bogdan and Viktor, the boss.
It was quite hard to keep the accent and what they have to say to be connected, but by around 4:00, we managed to finish the recording. we celebrated by drinking cans.
Tomorrow we are planning on finishing up on premiere.

Construction: Reflections - What We Have Done So Far 2

So far:

What we have done recently was the door scene with Bogdan and his subordinate. This was also a success considering the amount of time i spent explaining the scene to the rest of the group. i am really thankful that i did, we managed to get past this recording session swiftly, There was a little mistakes while opening the door, like it was locked, Half open or we could hear one of our teammates pets in the background.
we then returned to class and added those scenes to the ones we already had up. And synced them up professionally.

Construction: Reflections - Highs and Lows of Production

The Highs of the production:

1. Everyone is working together, we have just got a calendar set on the dates we plan to record. these days consists at the end of Fridays to our Thursday breaks every week. The team is really nice to each other, from giving sometime acting advice to the different camera shots we try out. Although we make many mistakes, each of us stick together like a good group should.
Many of us had a specialty in different things, such as the editor, the actor, the director and our sound picker. Putting these accolades together makes a great project in the end that includes many laughs.

2. While we were editing, we all had our inputs into what sounds we need to add into what scenes which we had all agreed upon. Next was our cooperation inside the room. When it was time to do our podcasts, we all gave each other scripts about the topic the podcast was about, Although we had to retake many of them, nobody argued and continued with their work. Then comes the evaluation, when we all realised we had to do our evaluation podcasts as a solo, we were all worried that we might mess up straight away, but because we wrote the questions down, we were confident enough to know what we had to talk about in about 3 takes each.

The Lows of the production:

1. Although everyone did their work, some of us miss days off because of sickness. normally due to this, they are not able to complete the work that they are assigned bringing are team further back. at one point, one of our group members did not appear for a whole 3 lessons. However, we did manage to get some more work done leaving that members work behind. They basically had to catch up to the rest of us with the work they have missed out.
It doesn't even have to be a sickness. Most of us think that because there is no more class, we can relax during the weekend, which leads to more work not being done.

Construction: Reflections - What Has Happened So Far

So far:

We have just filmed the outside scenes of the two characters running, of Bogdan placing the bag and taking a leak behind the wall and Emmanuel coming across the bag. Todays session went very quickly as we knew what we were doing and had the perfect camera shots to do so. Right now we have finished putting together those scenes into premiere and are ready to record the rest.

Construction: Bloopers

During the process of making this movie, there were a lot of mistakes that have occured. These included the actors getting their lines wrong, people laughing during the scenes and many other things. Firstly, the mistakes that happened occured very often during film every time we would move to a new scene, the actors would mess up. The common mistake would be that the actors would laugh during their lines and if it was not that, then it would have been them saying the wrong lines which tended to be annoying. How we managed to work past the bloopers/mistakes would be by re filming the exact same scene but giving them clear directions & making sure that no one interrupts the actor when they're speaking. Furthermore, there was 3 seconds of silence before the actors could speak in order to edit out any interruptions.

Construction: Reflections - Film

We have just finished producing our Film.

What we have done well-  i believe that our camera shots were our strongest feat in this film, they were ranging from the POV shots to the Extreme long shots. Some of these camera shots were moving from left to right as seen in the long shot and of Emmanuel running along the pavement.
The camera shot that we have used the most was the low angle shot and medium shot, i don't really know why we had these low angle shots because nobody was showing power, The medium shots were used in the phone scene, this was because this scene was mostly focused on dialog and dialog only.
Another feat that i think we have done well in was the continuity. We have recorded all of our clips in one day so that the weather and clothing would be the same in all our clips. We also made sure that there weren't going to be any cuts between our clips when joining them up together.

What we need to improve on- I believe that our acting needs a lot of improvement, This is mostly because we cannot be heard most of the time. Although it was our first time doing this, so it is understandable for it to need improving.

Construction: Reflection - The Results

The results that came back were mostly positive. we got some constructive criticism which we would improve on in the future, we got most of our audiences to laugh at a scene in which one of our actors took part in, the reason why it was funny was because of the way he took the bag.
Some people do not like the fact that we have included the Russian accents because of our interpretations being no where near the standard of a normal Russian accent.
We got some uniqueness out of our film though, being the only group who would even include an accent.
This was a fun project to do, thanks to the team.

Construction - Reflection: Finish/Target Audience

We have now finished with our premiere editing, what we will now have to is show the finished outcome to the audience and get some feedback.
We have already made a survey on survey monkey and are awaiting results to come in, we have also asked people to come in on a certain day to watch our film. On the same day, we will record their feedback in order to help improve our future film development.
Hopefully that goes well.

Construction: Reflection - After Survey

The survey we were planning on doing (on a website called SurveyMonkey) has now gone up, we are now waiting for one of our members to upload the survey onto a social network to get people to take part. Once we get the results, we will act upon the feedback in the future.
In the meantime, we are working on all our current blogposts.

Construction: Non Diegetic Music

Introduction to the setting

Chase scene




Chase scene 2




Our music is here to create the atmosphere of the opening that we shall be filming and these we have made in accordance to the sound that will be overplayed during the long shots as well as the chase.
The first part is calm and therefore will be musically setting the environment for what is about to come therefore setting the scenes using 2 senses and allowing it to be more obvious as well as relatable to the character.

Construction : Strengths and Weaknesses 3

Construction: Strengths and Weaknesses 2

Construction - Strengths and Weaknesses 1