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

Our film develops and challenges forms and conventions of a typical 'western' film. Typical forms and conventions of a western is firstly the mis-en-scene. Things such as buildings tend to look old/dusty etc. 

We decided to support this, so that as soon as you start watching out film introduction you instantly know what genre it is. To do this we used old, rusty metal chairs with wooden furniture which was also very dusty. All the furniture looked as if it had been not used a lot, which could suggest that this room could be rarely used and in our case it isn't as it is used for a hideout by the 'angry men' for where they keep their stash of money.

Another important form and convention of a western film is the chase scene, which normally is on horse back. But we decided to develop this and had the chase scene on foot as we felt this might add more pace and tension to the scene. But as we didn't totally want to ignore a very important part of a western, the horse, as we felt that a western without horses would almost not seen like it matched the name of the genre. So we used it later on in the film in an escape scene.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The main thing we changed and developed was the representation of social groups within the film. With our actors we had them in bandanas, checkered shirts and old worn in jeans. I feel this gave our western the edge into the contemporary western genre, instead of just a typical normal western.

Compared to a typical western this is quite different. They normally wear cowboy hats, sputs, leather jackets and dirty over used boots.

Also the scenery of our rooms/buildings connotes that the people who live in these areas are of a more poor quality of life and a western style.

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

The distrubtor and stuido vary from one western to another, yet there are a few that are the same. For instance Touchstone Pictures distributed The Missing (2003) and All the pretty horses (2000).Also they were the production company for Hidalgo which i have looked at perviously on my blog. But Touchstone pictures was owned and established by Walt Disney Company in 1984. Therefore Touchstone Pictures have distrubited many Walt Disney film and films like 'Pretty Woman' and 'Dead poet society'. Therefore you would not seen them to be a distributor for western films. But with the two westerns that were made more recently could suggest a new lot of films going to be distributed by them.

But in the new recent western film released "True Grit" was distrubuted by 'Paramount Pictures' and studios Scott Rudin Productions, Skydance Productions and Mike Zoss Productions. Therefore i think the new likely media institution who would distribute my media proudcut would be Paramoun Pictures as they are obviously interested in western films and will get good press due to True Grit.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

As our genre is western i decided/knew from the start that the audience for my media would be a niche audience. This is because westerns are seen to be quite an old style of film meaning that the niche market would be from the older generation. But recently a new film has came out called "True Grit" which has been realesed as a certificate 15. Also True Grit is recieving alot of good press and i think the audience for this particular western will be alot larger than what i would see an old western such as "Monte Walsh" which audience has shrunk due to it being 'unpopular'. So it is quite possible that the audience for my film could of grown during the period of time from the storyboarding to the finsih product due to this new western film.

How did you attract/address your audience?

To attract/address our audience we tried to greart a very strong first clip which was a pan of the room. I felt this did a good job as with the western style music in the background and also the western themed room it created a feel straight away that you knew you were watching this genre. The music we used was "dreaming guitars - desert wind"(from http://www.music-for-video.com/). It took a very long time to find the correct genre to suit our film. But the music we found is very soft but has the slight twist of something interesting might happen. By having these things it stops the audience from wondering what genre this is which could lead to the possibility of them not wanting to watch anymore as they are too confused.

But to try and get the audience to give imput into the film we used a questionaire to get their full answers and opinions on what their views were on what should/shouldn't be in a in western film. (see at the begining of blog). But we did find that 5/7 people did enjoy a western film.



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

In the process of constructing this product i have learnt alot of things about the  technologies.
The main thing i learnt that helped greatley was using final cut express more efficently. By acheieving this we were able to cut and edit our film to create much smoother moving images. We learnt how to use transitions and fades. The fades were extremley useful as we ended up using quite alot of them. This involved fading one clip down while the other clip was fading into more brightness/contrast.

I also learnt how to convert video files into the correct format that final cut express would understand. This involved using MPEG streamclip which we then imported the clips in and then had to set lots of settings so that it would convert correctly. Then all we had to do was import the new converted clips into final cut express. This was a greatly useful skill as we had alot of clips to convert and will also be handy in the future with other forms of converting such as music.

Also we learnt how to trick the audience, which is a great technology/trick within itself. In our horse scene we were unable to get the two actors on the horse at the same time safely. So therefore we had to change our whole horse scene completly. We had to film 3 different sections. We filmed the hooves of the horse as we had one person on the horse riding along. We did this by driving along side the horse on a quadbike with one person driving another filming. Then we had the riders point of view scene.

Then we had a scene where we scene just the two actors. To do this we got both our actors to sit on other peoples shoulders, where then they had to follow closley one behind the other to make it seem like they were both riding a horse together at the same time. While this was happening me and jess filmed from the side getting the actors going across from one side of the shot to the other.

This was an extremely hard task to trick the audience, I feel we have done quite a good job in this but this was defienantly the most hardest/important thing i learned.