SMALL TOWN MONEY (final piece)

Evaluation Question 7

One of the ways we have improved our work since the preliminary is our editing skills. For example, we got better at matching what was going on screen with the music. This is apparent within both our main task and our trailer. In our main film, we made sure to line up the title cards with the music. The music was, we feel, an integral part of our film, so making sure the titles cards lined up perfectly with the music was important and we achieved this.

Overall our skills have improved vastly since the preliminary, but the preliminary gave us the knowledge to be able to go on and make our full film and the trailer.

One specific example of how our skills have improved can be seen by comparing our preliminary task to our final task. For example, we improved in the sense that we got better at matching the action on screen to the music. In our preliminary, we tried to match the song to the closing locker at the start, and whilst it was fairly successful, we were much better at it in our main task, and the timing of the title cards with the music is impeccable; this was a vital part of our opening.

It is clear than we improved our continuity because looking back at our preliminary, there are subtle mistakes, such as a camera bag being in the background of a shot or locker doors being open in one shot and not in the next. We tried to rectify these mistakes in our main task which is why there are no camera bags in sight. We even went to the extent of asking people to leave sections of the train station so we could film there and not have to worry about them being in one shot and not the next. We also timed our filming schedule to be when there would be the fewest number of people at the station to try and bolster our chances of having good continuity within the film. Below is a print screen of our preliminary task; it shows the camera bag to the left hand side of the screen which should not be there.

 

Evaluation Question 6

Q6

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

To start off with we will need ideas on the marketing techniques we would use to attract market attention. We can sue strategies like Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, posters, trailers, billboards and even Small Town Money merchandising. As you can see half of our marketing strategies is the use of social media. This is because it is a marketing option that is very popular and free. By doing this we will be narrowing down the connection between the audience and the institutions. Also social media allows you to post anything content wise like trailers, messages, links etc.

The role of a film distributor is to deal with the distribution of a film, the marketing of a media product and to deal with the promotion of the media product to build the hype up for the event.

The first option to who might distribute our media product can be the United Kingdom Film Council. This is a small national lottery funded body that helps British films that might not have the power and the resources to distribute films. Since the opening of this body they have helped distribute nearly one thousand British films! The UK film coil has the aim of getting British produced films to compete with other international releases. this could be a good consideration as our film is produced in the UK and does not have a lot of resources and financial backing to get a deal with a global distributor.

Our second option for a film distributor is Warner Bros. This is because from our researching and planning we realised that they had produced The Dark Knight. The themes in the Dark Knight matched our production a lot and they had produced other films like The Prestige, The Town and Slumdog millionaire. They are a very experienced distributors as well so they can boost our audience size. They are a global competitor and are very experienced so they can deal with our production really well. Warner Bros have been going into partnerships as well so that they can boost the effort and audience attention to the media product. The problem with Warner Bros is that they are typically interested in films that have the potential to make lots of profit or to win lots of awards and considering our media product is a small production the chances of them realistically going up with us is really low, but a great consideration to have.

As you can see from the screenshot above Warner Bros does go into partnerships quite a lot and some of the partnership companies are not really that popular.

Overall our conclusion si that we will choose both of the distributors. We will select Warner Bros first because they are really professional at what they do and then go into a partnership with the UK film council. Warner brothers can be vital for the marketing of the film and with their background of success if they agree to this then they can help make our film successful. There will be a drawback which might be that they will want a certain percentage of the profits which is not a great issue because they have potential to distribute the film globally which is increasing the audience size. Overall this will be beneficial both ways. With the budget from WB the filming and general quality of the film can be better meaning that the audience reviews will be better meaning that it will have success. The UKFC can help the distribution of the film in the UK as they want British films to be promoted a lot as well. WB are quite interested in small industry films which shows a potential chance of an agreement.

Evalaution Question 5

Term 3 Week 3 Action Plan

Evaluation question 4

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

The technology that we have learnt most about in this product is final cut pro. This is because we were expecting the programme to be standard but as we kept on suing it we realised the amount of features that was available on this piece of technology. For example there is a lot of custom edit choices available like editing decisions also it can get you into full detail on exactly where you want to cut a piece of a clip. This was not available on other technologies which made final cut pro stand our for us. This piece of technology really enhanced our work because it gave a lot of features that we needed. The filters really gave the edge to our film because the genre was crime and being able to put fast paced editing and eccentric filters helped achieve giving the edge and get memorable introduction. From the filters we learnt that you have so many options available you can use any that can fit into any genre and it widens your view for the future on what you can film and how much technology has developed.

The main reasons why we liked Final cut pro is listed below:

-Transitions
-Advanced clip editing and cutting
-Effects
-Title cards and fonts

The other technology that we have used is Blogger. This is a blogging method created by Google which helped us post our information, data, research, film and evaluation onto. This was really useful for us because the side tabs made looking at posts really easy to do along with the tags made it easier to find a certain post. We also learnt something from Blogger which is that you can embed different media files which was useful.

For presentation purposes we used Emaze and Microsoft Powerpoint. From Emaze we have learnt that there are many different software options available to use for presentations. Emaze was particularly good because you can embed the powerpoint onto the blog easily which saved time. Powerpoint was used for all of our action plans. This was because it was easy to make and we wanted to sue Emaze for big presentations because it had better themes and transitions.

We also used a programme called Bubbl, which helped our mind map presentations. This was really useful to help present our thoughts and the decisions we made.

Youtube was used for uploading our drafts and videos onto our blog and for private viewing. Final cut pro offered a direct link to Youtube when you have edited videos on there which made it simple and easy to upload and access. One thing we learnt from Youtube that was frustrating was that if we wanted a song to download and use for our product then we would have to contact the studio each time which became frustrating.

Evaluation Question 3

Q5:

Term 3 Week 2 Action Plan

Also We need to upload our poster

Poster Research

In order to make a poster we needed to research different film posters and what they convey.

Our film has a hierarchy system of power and this would be our main focus point to show this in our poster so the audience know who the main characters are and their authority and power.

We research films with posters that represented a diamond shape of power. We found a really good one which was the Iron Man Three one.



This is a poster that we would like to base our poster on. Not copying it but using this style of layout.

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 1

Term 3 Week 1 Action Plan

Small Town Money Trailer

Final version of our film feedback

Audience feedback-
Feedback from our peers and other people has told us the strengths and weaknesses of our film.

For example, one of the strengths of our work was the title cards. People thought the alignment with the music, the music itself and the footage in the background worked really well and strongly suited the genre. This is good because it makes our film more like an actual crime film; therefore people would be more willing to go and see it.

One of the weaknesses of our work according to feedback was the meet up with 'The Boss'. This is quite an unorthodox scene as it takes place in a town centre, somewhere you would not normally expect a drug related meeting to take place. Our audience and peers told us that this could be improved, however we decided to make the executive decision to keep it how it was, as we feel that one of the most appealing things about our film was the fact that it portrays elements of life that are not present for most people; so a drug deal in a public place is what we wanted.

One of the ways we adapted our work to suit our audience feedback was the removal of the scene displaying the use of cocaine. Feedback from our audience including teachers told us that we should remove this scene, as it didn't look very realistic and ruined the film, which up to that point was of a higher standard. We eventually decided to change the entire ending of the film to make it more professional.

SMALL TOWN MONEY

Term 2 Week 8 Action Plan

Audience feedback for edit 1

The first piece of feedback we got was from George Allan. He mentioned that the sound quality was not really that good and we agreed with him as it spoils the build up for the film. To fix this we have decided to find a new file of the song and replace it with the old one so the sound quality is much better.

We also realised that the title cards were not well edited to the beat of the music. for this we edit this so that it matches perfectly aiming it look professional.

Kamal Singh also added that at the start of the film you would see a certificate of the age ratings and other production companies that were involved. We realised that this was missing and so when we get back to editing for the second draft we will need to add these so it makes it more familiar for the audience.

Halfway through the film Rutendo questioned us about how the main character got from one ned of the platform to the other. We realised that this could be a mistake so we had to fix this. This means that we will have to add footage of the main character moving from one platform to the other.

Another thing that we both realised just after publishing the first draft that at no point does the film name come up on screen and this would cost us lots of marks. So when we get back to editing we need to make sure that this is included.

This is all our audience feedback from the first draft of Small Town Money.

Small Town Money First edit

Term 2 Week 7 Action Plan

Editing Decision

We are contemplating changing the background of our title cards because we feel having a really quick time lapse of traffic driving through a town would suit the name and theme of our film. Audience feedback will determine whether or not we use this or not.