How did you attract/address your audience?

Attracting the audience was not something that was very difficult to achieve because we had a clear idea on the people we wanted to come and see our movie. There were several things we did during the fliming and also the editing that made it even more teen orientated because that is what we wanted. While filming, the mis-en-scene was changed to fit the party atmosphere we were going for. Also the costumes worn on the set of the film helped to further attract the teen audience we wanted. The closest real media product to ours is perhaps the E4 show 'Skins' because the cast are all are teenagers just like ours.


When editing our video we made the cuts faster and shorter to make it fast paced and attract a younger audience.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film intro is based on a group of young, vain London boys and follows through the many adventures and every day activities of their lives. This says that the target audience is 17-25 and not older people as they wont be very interested in a film like ours. We represent their lifestyle in different ways throughout our intro. For example in the last few seconds of the intro, you see the guys saying goodbye to the girls and they dint look interested at all. This shows that they do this very often and further empathises on their lifestyles which is basically to go out, get the good-looking girls and forget about the next day almost identical to the character 'Barney Stinson' in the show 'How i met your mother'

However, the sound of Max's voice in the voice over is depressing and this suggests he might be heading downwards in his life even though it seems his lifestyle couldn't be any better. This could possibly mean that he might get tired of his promiscuous behaviour and settle down later in the film when he finds a girl. This shows that the girls are also somewhat in control of his life and this is not how it is shown in the first minutes of the film.

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

Several high production movies get distributed by various big institutions around the world. Our media product however is not a very high production movie but rather a decent British movie so the institutions that will distribute our product will vary. There are still a lot of institutions which distribute our type of movie and one of them is be Film 4.
Film 4 distribute a lot of great British movies because they're a large and successful company.

Other than these, websites such as Twitter can be used to distribute the product. For example, 'Narcissist' could have a twitter page where there will be updates about the movie and also info on other things around the movie such as star interviews. Another website is Facebook and its great for distribution because you can have adverts on the side bar. Also there are games and 'Narcissist' could have a game asking a few questions on what you know about the movie.
We made a facebook group on Narcissist as well.







Also, our music is original because Ellie got a friend that was a DJ and he created a 30 minute mix in which we picked about 2 minutes of it and used for our intro. It took a lot of time to cut it and get it into the right places but eventually we got it. The music would help distribute our product because it is the type of music that our target age group would listen to.

Furthermore, Itunes could be used as another medium of distribution. Soundtracks from the movie could be downloaded from there. Also, trailers and teasers can be made down loadable.
This is the link to the website his music is uploaded:
http://soundcloud.com/joshlake

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

At the beginning of the year, we had a preliminary exercise in which we had a short film clip of Kuan and Max exchanging words about AIDS. I learnt a little bit about cameras though this exercise because I was not directing it. Also, I used imovie to edit a recording for the first time as well. It was not as difficult as I thought it was because digital technology has made editing much easier. All the transitions/effects are on the screen and are easy to find and insert in the video.


Our film intro however, made me learn a lot more than I thought I would. I started using the tri-pod to record different scenes of the intro. Also I learnt about the 180 degree rule and shot, reverse shot. I also learnt a lot more about editing and the occasional difficulties in using imovie. An example of that was when we wanted a photo montage to be part of the film opening sort of like 'How I met your mother' but we could not use imovie to create this so we decided to use idvd and then transfer it to imovie. This is the 'How I met your mother' photo montage we wanted and what we eventually settled for.





The post production process was also taught me a lot. I found out why some titles would not fit in specific clips because of the time frames. Another thing I learnt is that lighting looks different everywhere we recorded so we had adjust the white balance to make it look how we wanted it. Also the more the post-production technology helped us cut it fast, the more technologically enhanced the project looked.

Who would be the target audience for your media product?

Initially, my first thought about the target audience for our film intro was that the age group definitely fell in between the ages 17-25 making the audience teenagers and young adults.

'Narcissist' our film intro is based on the London nightlife of a group of young individuals trying to live their lives in a stylish way.



It is the 21st century and the highest number of people that go to the cinemas to watch movies fall under the age of 17-25. This was one of the reasons why we chose to do 'Narcissist' as our media product. We had to think about the gender of the audience we were trying to attract. It is a romantic comedy with a different twist to it because the storyline revolves around three guys, this means both male and female audiences will be attracted. Also another point is in the intro, you see three different couples, it suggests the sexuality of the target audience.


Another thing I thought about was the nationality/region in which the film was set. It is based in London so obviously the main target audience will be the teenage/young adult Londoners but also we want to attract audiences in other parts of England.


In addition, the lavish lifestyle of the people partying in the intro shows that they're all middle class families and perhaps this is another point to consider.

There are several ways in which we managed to attract the audience. Firstly the music is very fast and not the genre older people would enjoy listening to. The editing also was sped up to become fast paced so as to keep the audience interested. The transitions we added helped enhance the fact that we wanted it to be that way.

A similar fast paced movie to ours is the 'The Ugly Truth' with Gerard Butler. It is a romantic comedy and although the actors aren't young, it attracts a young target audience. This is a picture/poster of movie. I think it potrays the same sort of image as ours.


After taking a look at the BBFC website, we decided that our film fell under the category age of '15 and over' it contains strong language and sex references and it wounldnt be suitable for young children.

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

There are a few ways our media product use forms and a convention of a real media product. After watching the opening sequence of the show 'How I met your mother' we decided it would be a good idea if we used stills our intro as well. It was a great way to show all our characters and what was going on that night. After taking the pictures we realised it was harder than we imagined because the original show has CGI equipment that we couldn't get hold of. What we had to was to alter it and make our on version of the stills on idvd. It made it look more unique and also great. This is a way in which we used a form of a real media product.

We have developed our intro from the 'How I met your mother' into making it target a British audience as supposed to an American one.

Furthermore, we have challenged the real media product because we are undermining the characters of our film. It is the opposite of the show 'How I met your mother' where Barney Stinson is being portrayed as a legend.


Also we used the a voice over in our intro and the idea was taken from the movie 'Alfie'. This is another way in which our media product develops a form of a real media product.

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

Our group filmed two videos for our preliminary task because we thought the first one we shot wasn't great. After watching both we realized that the first was actually better and decided that was the one to put up on our blogs. There were several reasons why the second video didn't look great. There were three jump shots during the video and it make it look strange. Also there was a line from the dialogue that was missed and it was crucial to the story. Furthermore, there was a lot more panning in the first video than the second one and therefore the first video looked more coherent.

I learnt a lot of things from the preliminary task even though there were some things that weren't part of the final product for example the 180 degree rule. We didn't actually get a chance to use that in our final piece but while we were filming the preliminary video I learnt that you cant pass the 180 degree line while recording a conversation or anything else that shows two people so that they don't swap the positions they were originally. Also I learnt about the shot reverse shot because we used it in our preliminary video but we didn't have a scene with that in the final piece. Another thing I learnt was the use of match on action and we used that in a scene of our final piece where the door is being closed and someone walks out of the house. In our final piece we used a variation of shots including mid-shots, close-ups and long shots and this was something I also practiced doing in the preliminary exercise. As well as doing that, we also used still shots in the final piece and this made it more interesting and impressionistic. The mis-en-scene of the preliminary exercise was also altered to fit the kind of short intro we were going for and this was a key part of our final piece. I learnt how to use the tripod during the preliminary task and used it also to record a few shots in the final piece. A big difference between the preliminary video to the final video was that we used music added the club-like, fast paced feeling we were looking for. The titling of our preliminary video 'Positive', also gave me an idea of how to use titles on imovie and when I had to use it again for the final piece it wasn't too difficult.

This is the preliminary video:

Animatic storyboard

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This is the storyboard for our film intro 'Narcissist'. It is part of the planning and constrution of our work. Before we started working as a group on 'Narcissist', I had my own movie intro storyboard called 'Jimmy' but we didn't film that.

Description of my intro + Beyond the intro

It basically starts with very short cuts between flashback and reality. In the first shot you're able to see the character playing basketball with his mates. It quickly cuts back to reality where you see the same character walking on crutches across a sports hall. He is also looking down and seeing the basketball court he used to play on before the tragic injury. It then goes back to the flashback which is in the basketball court and the character jumps to shoot the ball. Just as he is about to shoot there is another cross cut and it goes back to reality and the character continues walking then leans against the balcony. It then goes back to the flashback and he shoots the ball, lands awkwardly and hurts his ankle. There is a zoom in on his face when he lands and you see the agony/pain he is in. That is the last flashback and then back. There is a cut back to reality where it shows him walking across the hall and into the changing room. He then sees Ryan, a friend, getting ready for training and he sits down and has a conversation with him about the lack of desire to play even when he is back to full fitness because he is does not think he is ever going to be the same player he was before the injury. They talk about all the other habits like smoking that he picked up due to the emotional stress of being on the sidelines for so long. He then walks out the room and walks through the hall where he stops and glances at a framed picture of the great basketball player Max Leiva but does not show any real emotion. Most of the conversation is in shot reverse shot. All the shots are basically about 4 seconds long each and for most of the flashbacks the camera is at a slightly high angle. The flashbacks are in slow motion to try and capture the players moves in some sort of glorified way.

Beyond the intro
As the movie progresses the character's downfall is much more serious and the things he gets involved with are deeper. He starts using all sort of drugs to distract him from getting angry at not being able to play. The genre is not very clear but there is a similarity in story lines between my movie and the movie '17 Again'. In that movie Zac Effron gets another chance after he blows it during high school. It is the same idea but without the whole comic thing about him going back in the past. My story is a bit more profound and has a darker meaning to it. This intro is meant to attract the teenage audience.

Production Diary: Day 1

Monday, 18th January 2010
First day of filming. Max, Ellie and I recorded the first shot of the intro in his room. Shes looking into the mirror, putting on some make-up and you see her reflection on the mirror. It was initially a mid shot of her body but we had to change it. It took us a bit of time to get used to using the camera but we managed to shoot the scene it accurately. The shot is just two seconds. When we finished we looked at what we recorded and decided a close up will work better in making it a bit more like an intro.

Day 2

Tuesday, 19th January 2010

Today was the second day of filming our intro. We managed to shoot three scenes in one hour. The first one was a better version of the shot yesterday. We zoomed in on Ellie's face to give a better effect. I though it was of higher quality than the shot we filmed yesterday. We also did another shot of me picking up my bank cards, keys, a lighter and a pack of cigarettes on the table. This was a bit more complicated than we originally thought it would be because I was meant to pick everything up in one clean swipe and also Max was supposed to zoom out and pan the camera at once but we found a suitable way to do it. We had to change the way i picked up the things, so instead I used both hands and picked them up separately. The last thing we filmed was Ellie putting on a high heel. This wasn't too difficult and once we took a few shots it looked very good.

Day 3

Wednesday, 20th January 2010

Third day. Unfortunately we did not get much work done today. We planned on filming at 9am but had to wait for the second girl in our intro to show up but she eventually didn't. The plan was to film her scene and the other 'key' scene so we ended up only doing the 'key' scene. The three of us went into Scholars house and filmed it. It didn't take very long. None of us thought it was fantastic so we might look at it later and maybe film it again.

Day 4

Monday, 25th January 2010

Fourth day. The three of us reviewed all the footage that Max shot while he was in London. They were a lot so we had to delete most of the bad ones. He filmed certain stations in the london underground. We also played around with the effects on 'imovie' to see which ones we would eventually pick. In addition to all that we got some filming done today. We got the shot of Jade brushing her hair getting ready for the party. We did a few takes of that and I thought they were all decent. Later in the evening, we went to The Regal and took the still pictures with Jade, Ellie, and BK. Max took all the pictures.

Day 5

Tuesday, 26th January 2010

After we got the still pictures last night, we thought it would be a good idea to put our piece together and start thinking about the editing and how its all going to work out. We had a look at the clips and finally decided where and when to cut them because most of them were too long. Ellie put the clips together even though they were parts of it we have not recorded yet because the rest of it is in london. We hand-picked the pictures we wanted to use in the intro and put them onto idvd to try and create a slide-show. We decided what background to use too.

Day 6

Wednesday, 27th January 2010

We found it really difficult to import the idvd clip into imovie. We tried various ways including putting the idvd file on a blank disc and then importing to imovie but that still didn't work. I downloaded a software which I thought would help us but that also was useless. We eventually got a guy called Julio to import it because he had a particular software in his memory stick that we needed to use.

Day 7

Monday, 1st February 2010

After importing it, we cut about 5 seconds of idvd video because it was too long. I also put in some transitions to make the piece look a bit better. I had to edit a lot of the shots as well because we thought most of them looked better either slower or faster. Furthermore we decided to make another idvd clip of the still shots. We did it and put some other pictures then imported them to imovie.

This is a picture of the photo montage.

Day 8

Thursday, 4th February 2010

Max and I went into town and we filmed the club scenes. We went to Revolution and The Fez and we managed to film people standing in the queue and also the bouncers letting them in. We also filmed cars passing by and the we did close-ups on the club names. The panning was also done almost to perfection as we got the disco light inside the club and the zoomed out to show the outside of the club. There weren't any difficulties with the filming although we were asked by the manager at Revolution to email them asking for permission before we used their name in our intro. The bouncers also had a problem with us filiming them and they asked us to leave :)

This is a short clip from the intro. It shows the revolution.

Day 9

5th February 2010

Today we added in the shots from last night. We placed them differently in between the first few shots of the intro and made it look more complete. I edited the beginning of the intro and cut out a lot of seconds to make it look shorter and more fast paced like we imagined it initially. Also I added some transitions like the 'cross dissolve' and 'push' to make it look more efficient when moving from shot to shot. Unfortunately we could not get the music we needed for the intro but we are working on it and we should probably have it by next week. This is the kind of music we're looking to get though. 'Ohh Wee' By Ghostface Killah, Nate Dog & Mark Ronson

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Day 10

This morning we tried to film the last bit of our intro but couldn't because of the actors needed were all busy. We decided to start working on the titles and deciding where to put them and which fonts to use. We already had some titles on the still pictures that we made on idvd therefore we thought about putting the rest in different shots. We started off with putting the the credit of the music producer on the shot where the disco ball is flashing. Then we put the costume designer on another shot on the heel shot which is up there.

Day 11

Tuesday, 9th February 2010

We tried out different shades of orange and effects to try and fit a title in on the train shots but we couldn't find any effect to use because all the shots were so short. They were all one or two seconds and that made it particularly difficult to put any titles in. Also the original idea of changing the words in the train to make it look like title credits was not able to be done because we need some high tech CGI equipment to be able to that.

Clip from intro. Piccadilly Circus

Day 12

Wednesday, 10th February 2010

Today we managed to get a lot credits in on different shots of the intro. We put in all the names eg Jade Ashcroft, in the right places and they looked quite good. Furthermore, I found a suitable effect to use on our actual title 'Narcissist'. We had to cut some shots into two parts to make it look decent but it worked quite well. The titling and credits are nearly done and what we need now is the last shot of the intro where the guys say goodbye to the girls.

This is the title effect I decided to stick with.

Day 13

Wednesday 3rd March,

Today we decided to have a look back at our intro and see if any changes could be made to make it look better. After watching it, we realised that the titling needed to be improved a lot. We thought it would be a good idea if we removed all the names of the stars and put them in a slide show on power-point, then insert them back into imovie. The rest of the titles i.e the production manager remain on the actual intro with the tube sequence. We haven't actually finished but we hope to be done soon enough.

Day 14

Today was supposed to be our last day of filming but we couldnt get all that we wanted done because two of our actors werent available. We recorded the two boys (Max and I) saying goodbye to the two girls (Ellie and Jade). It was done in Stables and was filmed hand-held because there was a problem with the tri-pod. The shots were about 4 seconds long each.

Day 15

Monday 7th March,

We started editing the recording we got on friday. It wasnt as great as we wanted it to be because it look low budget. We didnt have the tripod that day so everything we filmed was handheld. We realised we needed to film all over again because we couldnt get the actors we originally wanted. In the draft recording I was just a dummy. We then decided to continue playing around with our titles because the slide show power point idea didnt work out quite well. We had to import the whole film intro again without the titles and then put them were we wanted to.

Day 16

Tuesday 8th March,

We got the actors we originally pictured in the intro and started re-filming the 'goodbye' scene. It took a short amount of time to film but there was a problem because we couldnt get a couple to be in the scene due to complications. We then started editing and added the transitions and effects.

Day 17

Wednesday 9th March,

After editing, there was one more thing we needed to get done in order for the intro to be complete and finished. We needed to get the music. Initially, Max was supposed to get one of his mates to compose the song so we could use it in our piece but he couldn't get it so Ellie's friend helped us out and gave us the permission to cut out a part of his song. Ellie and I listened to it and though it was great and would fit in perfectly with the intro.

Day 18

Friday 11th March,

We got the music and imported it into our project on imovie and now all we had to was cut out the bits we needed and edited so it fitted perfectly with everything.
Also another thing we did was, we imported the audio of Max saying 'There was no laughter the morning after, but that performance last night was worth a Bafta'. This was meant to come as the title 'Narcissist' came up in the intro. We edited the music so it faded when there was dialogue and the end of the intro so the voices of the actors could be heard.

Day 19

Monday 14th March,

After the work done on friday, there was nothing much to do to the intro again. We added in a few more credits including a production company name. Also we got a different piece of the music for the tube sequence and imported it. We added in a bit more of the music right at the tail end of the intro so it sorts of fade out. We then watched the whole thing a couple of times and couldn't point out any particular flaws apart from a few blips which we cut out.