Evaluation of our media product
(film opening sequence)
‘Extraction’

•Our media product challenges forms and conventions of real media products by tackling race, social stereotypes and criminality. Also we wanted to portray a gritty yet realistic view on society in the 70s and 80s. Furthermore, we wanted to create a thriller with suspense, action and mystery.

•The main character, Agent Charles Carmichael, is portrayed in our project as through a mixture of dominant but emotionally unstable ideology. At first he is seen as calm and in control (i.e a dominant ideology) He is shown later as being emotionally cold and unstable; he loses his temper and can not control his emotions. (For example, when he starts to get impatient and hits the prisoner.) We tried to emphasise this and give the character a very ‘masculine’ role. Also we wanted to show that this man was a calm and professional person. However, the loss of his daughter makes his male instincts to protect his own and to get his revenge. Also the character Carmichael has similarities with characters in films such as ‘No Country for Old Men’. Both main characters had government jobs that protected people and saved lives. However, both characters went off the rails and went to extremes to get what they wanted.

Furthermore, we wanted to show how in the 70s and 80s race was defined and the different stereotypes used in society . E.g. associating criminal activities or anti-social behaviour with young black males in society.

(For example, the character young black male: Matt Seaby is thought to be hiding information and could have connection with the kidnapping of Carmichael's daughter. We wanted represent government authorities and how they treated and discriminated different ethnic minorities by socially labelling them.

Target Audience

•We aimed our product at people around the ages of 15-25. However, when conducting both pre and post production surveys, we found that adults aged around 30-50 would enjoy watching the opening sequence and the whole film. Therefore, when making the film we decided to change the film slightly so it would suit the target our more but not to drastically because we did not want to lose the our original audience.

•We aimed our product at the ‘laddish subculture’, because stereotypically males like fast action, guns, fights and crime.

•We think our media product is aimed at the C1 or C2 or D category of the Jicnar scale. Group C1 (Non-Manual) Lower middle class, white collar workers, e.g. Office Workers, Group C2 (Manual) Skilled working class, Blue collar workers, e.g. Car Mechanic Group D (Partly Skilled) Semi or unskilled manual workers, e.g. Assembly line worker. We feel that this film would suit a wide range of people from society.

We attracted our audience by using costumes that would look realistic such as the old detectives outfit. Also music that would fit into a scene in a thriller film. We used an old shed to provide an atmosphere of loneliness. We did this because most thrillers seem to use loneliness as a key way of scaring the audience. Films such as ‘No Country for Old Men’ and ‘Shooter’.

We leant how to use different technologies such as;

–Audio software: Adobe audition, we have become more skilled using the software and have improved since the start of our preliminary task.

–We learnt how to edit video and audio files together.

–Also we learnt how to use a camera effectively to record the action.

–We now know how to manipulate photos e.g brighten the picture or change colours of the photo. This was learnt when we were manking the DVD front cover.

Conclusion

•In our preliminary task we did not know how to use media that could create films. For example, using the software on the Macs.

•We have learnt to use different conventions of media.

•Overall we believe that we have improved in our ability to edit, create music, create DVD front covers. We have learnt from analysing many different genres of thriller films and music.

•We learnt how actual editors target their audience.