Hard Living Directors Commentary

Final Focus Group Task

Evaluation Question 7

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

Evaluation Question 6

6) What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

what have you learn about technologies from the process of constructing this product? on Prezi

Evaluation Question 4

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

The primary target audience of our opening sequence 'Hard Living' are roughly aged 15-20 because it features swearing and some violent scenes, so it is not suitable for those under the age of 15, also the content of the film may be considered as 'childish' or aimed at teenagers, so people over the age of 20 may consider themselves to be too 'grown up' to watch Hard Living.  The gender target audience is mainly men, this is because the audience will be able to relate to the characters seeing as they are all young teenage males- also the content of the film represents masculine themes such as fighting. 

The target audience's other favourite films may include british crime dramas such as Kidulthood & Adulthood, Shank, Attack the Block & Harry Brown.

The social demographics of our target audience are mainly C2 D and E because they will be able to identify to the characters because they live in poor deprived areas such as council estates and they may not have a similar lifestyle to our characters. Also some people from the A & B categories may watch our film because they may see it as an escape route from their ordinary day to day office busy lifestyles.

The research we done into our target audience included questionnaires finding out their preferences on the production of our film;

This document clearly shows what the target audience of our film want to see/hear in our opening sequence. The results made us alter and change some aspects of our sequence so it would appeal to our target audience even further. This questionnaire edged us to call our film 'Hard Living' & it also decided the filming location which ended up to be in a graffiti tunnel in an urban location in London.

Sam from Kidulthood

These results show that the audience want to see more stereotypical characters & locations similar to other British crime/drama films such as Kidulthood & SHANK in which the majority of the main characters are black with an aggressive attitude such as Sam from Kidulthood played by Noel Clarke.

Evaluation Question 3

3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why

Evaluation Question 2

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

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Evaluation Question 1

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

We used the conventional opening sequence of narrative enigma ,we used this because it makes audience puzzled and left unanswered which builds up the suspense, for example in our sequence we used the narrative enigma when the main character is seen immediately running away looking distressed and in panic, however when the audience spectate this they would be left with unanswered questions such as;
where is he running too?
who is he running from?
why is he running?

Another conventional opening sequence element we used was titles and subtitles. For our titles and subtitles we used a  font which we felt symbolised our stereotypical characters which are young teenagers from the urban deprived streets of London which is why we used a graffiti style of font.

We had quite a few unconventional elements within our opening sequence. One of these were the non-linear narrative that was shown from our voiceover, where we see the main characters fate play out and know that he is going to die, but the sequence itself begins disordered and carries on throughout leaving the unanswered questions. 

Changes to our Opening Sequence

When filming our opening sequence we made quite a few changes along the way which had great significance to how our opening sequence turned out. We decided that it would be easier to have main character die by just being beaten up, rather than being stabbed, as it would be a lot easier to show this in our opening sequence and it was something that we felt could be easier to film. By changing this I think we created a more successful way or showing our main characters death, as I think we would have struggled to try and make him look like he had been stabbed.

Another big change we made, was that we didn't have the 'gang' chasing our main character like we had planned in our story boards and ideas. We felt that it looked a lot more empowering and intimidating for the gang to appear and seem to have a more calmer state of mind, so that it built up more tension for the audience