1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
When I came to do the biographical project I had a strong idea of what sort of film I wanted it to be. I wanted it to strongly reflect the style of ‘Ray’ and its gritty old era as well as being influential and factual. I decided to use a simplistic theatre setting to decrease the contradiction of the modern era I was filming and the 1950s era I was trying to emulate. This is also why I set it in monochrome and filmed the figure implicitly, ensuring the film looked as professional as possible. I also drew on other films such as ‘8 mile’ by using the idea of nerves being reflected backstage in the dressing room. This is shown famously in ‘8 mile’ as Emimem is being filmed jumping up and down, staring in the mirror for reassurance and even being sick before a show. I used the dressing room idea in my opening to show Sinatra’s come down after shows and need for alcohol. I feel the opening has mixed the age of today and the era I was trying to emulate cleverly by using a mixture of aftereffects, simplistic bold titles and blurry clips set in monochrome.
2.How does your media product represent particular social groups?
My media product represents a particular social group by using the stereotypical mix of musicians and their tendency towards either aggression, drug or alcohol abuse. It shows how there are two sides to the lives of these famous people that the public aspire to be and the extent of naivety that the public have of these situations. Of course not all musicians are alcoholics or drug abusers yet it is commonly seen in the few films made based on musicians. This is due to the fact that the films would simply not be interesting enough to the viewer without some sort of tragedy and an opportunity to get to know the character and feel some sort of empathy and connection with them and the film. My media product represents this stereotype through the re-occurrence of props including the whiskey glass and bottle as well a motif of actions of Sinatra either aggressively slamming down the glass or sighing and looking restless.
3.What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
As my piece is both musical and biographical I reckon Universal would be an extremely suited institution to distribute my film. In the past it has distributed films such as Ray and Billy Elliot, these films connect as they have a strong musical and in Ray biographical sense to them. The films highlight sensitive, moral meaning throughout in an explicit, realistic way making a strong and powerful effect on the audience yet differently to the strong effect a thriller would have, this is often due to how the film as been distributed and therefore Universal does not distribute a large array of thrillers. My piece could be aimed at both cinema and TV due to its slight documentary feel to it.
4.Who would be the audience for your media product?
The type of audience i am aiming to target is not to a specific age although it is not be suitable for children merely because the opening has moments of tension where the audience is to feel empathy towards Sinatra's situation of stress and alcohol abuse. Therefore children would not have the same appreciataion to the symbolism of the whiskey bottle and his actions as mature young adults would. The audience ideally should be musical or interested in the life of Sinatra but i would hope that the film would be interesting to any mature teenager/adult despite there level of interest in Sinatra and music in general. The film would not be too explicit yet by rating it a '15' it decreases having to cater for everybody and gives an appropriate insight to the maturity needed for the best appreciation of the film.
5.How did you attract/address your audience?
Due to the intense emotional aspect of my film I never imagined it as film for people under 15, however I do not feel this limited the range of audience too much. I ensured that there was a broad range of interests throughout such as the music, biography, action through alcohol and drugs as well as the love and sex aspects of the film. To start with i created my poster to attract the audience, I decided to keep it simple yet bold and powerful by using black and white and the use of geometric shapes and lines, as well as introducing the characters by using portraits yet with main focus remaining on Sinatra himself. The large title ‘The Voice’ is simple to read and bold to help attract passes by. In order to keep the audience interested throughout the film I would make sure my piece was fast flowing yet not too fast so that it was jumpy and unsettling. I feel with it being a music based film the use of lots of music would all help to keep the audience alive.
6.What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Because before my preliminary exercise I had never done filming before, this whole project was all completely new to me. I learnt straight away that it is not as simple as standing there and pressing record on a video camera, it is incredible how in the situation unimaginable problems can occur as well as new ideas rising from everywhere. I have learnt that you must be aware of what sort of footage you want to capture whether you want handi-cam, gritty footage or steady, clean footage and that clean footage is not possible without a tri-pod. However the filming is just the beginning of the process and as then you have the editing to over come. With the editing I learnt differing techniques using both final cut and I-movie where I created animated titling and learnt about layering images, at first I found this really hard yet once I got the hang of it, it definitely became easier. I also learnt about layering sounds as well as adding and cutting sounds from my original footage. The sound aspect of the pience I tended to find easier then editing the images.
7.Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I have learnt that one has to always be up for discussion and open for new ideas when put in the situation of filming yet also it makes a large difference if you are properly prepared and have a strong idea of the footage that you want to capture. You must always be aware that it is possible to loose or ruin footage therefore you must always save your footage in more than one place ensuring there is a back up if something goes wrong. I believe you should push yourself to boundaries that you are unsure of to some extent, however, I found I struggled with the time frame a little as I was having to learn lots of new techniques whilst creating my piece to a standard that I was happy with.
