Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Click on the photo to take you to my Wix website.

Q3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Vertigo Films



What type of film do you have?
We are an independent, low budget film maker, based in England creating a short coming of age, horror film about a group of teenagers surviving through an apocalypse and how they manage to do it.

Why choose us?
We wanted to choose you because you are an independent film distributor and you are based in the UK therefore you would easily be able to distribute our film around the UK. We also chose you because you have distributed lots of other smaller films, such as Pudsey The Dog The Movie, which may not have been picked up by larger film companies. You also generally distribute films for children and teenagers which means that our film with a age rating of 15 would be a perfect film for your main audience.

Why should we chose you?
I think that you should choose use because we are independent film makers who wouldn't be given a chance by larger companies, I think that we would also bring you profits due to the fact that our film is not a blockbuster and would therefore not need lots of money to be made and distributed which means that everyone will have more profit. We have a different style to most coming of age films and therefore I think that we would be in a new market that would attract a larger audience of teenagers. The film was also made by 2 novice directors who could possibly create better films and therefore you would be starting their career. I think that your name at the very beginning of our film would make it look more professional and that our film would attract a larger audience if it was distributed by you around the UK. If we were chosen to be distributed by you then you would be giving new actors a chance to star in their first film as well as a new concept that hasn't really been covered from the children point of view before in other apocalyptic films such as zombie land and other zombie related films. This is because a lot of professional directors find it hard to create a storyline that people can easily follow whereas we think that this film is very easy to understand and therefore should be distributed by your company.

Q4. + Q5. Who would be the audience for your media product? How did you attract the audience?

For our media product we think that the primary audience for the opening sequence would be teenagers, possibly from a suburban background. We think that this would be the case because we are basing our characters around that sort of age range and from that kind of background. We have done this because we think that an audience of teenagers would relate to this film a lot more than adults would because the protagonists of the film are also teenagers. We tried to include the uses and gratification model so that our audience would be able to watch the opening and use it for their own pleasure or as a means of escape and hopefully to relax while watching it. We also wanted our audiences to be able to relate to the opening sequence and if it were  full film to be able to emotionally identify with the characters, hence the reason for using both sexes from different backgrounds in the opening. The secondary audience that we thought might be interested in the opening would be young adults, we thought that they might be able to relate with some of the more complex choices that the characters were making.

We also try and connect with the audience by using the costumes and the scripts for the characters, for example when we chose the costumes for our characters we made sure that they were all modern clothing that people would recognise or relate to something that they might wear. We made sure that the clothing was brought from recognisable shops such as H&M and Primark so that the clothing brands could be seen as something that suburban teenagers would be able to afford.

The Uses and Gratifications Model

This theory suggests that the audience are active when consuming a text, film, or television program. The audience use the media for their own pleasure, for example, diversion, escapism or for information.

And because the audience is in control of their experience with media, they are able to use it for relaxation, emotional satisfaction, and help with issues of personal and social identity.

Reception Theory

This theory considers how texts are encoded with deeper moral meanings, and how they are understood by the audience. Audiences will either understand the deeper meaning/message, or they will misunderstand or reject the idea. The audiences view is described as either:
Dominant- where an audience understands the meaning and generally agrees with it
Negotiated- where an audience neither agrees, nor disagrees with meaning, or holds no interest
Oppositional- where an audience understands the meaning, but rejects it, maybe because of cultural, political or ideological views they hold.

Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Camera - Before starting to create the opening sequence I had only been using cameras very basically for taking pictures and the odd short video, but since working with multiple cameras for the different media films I have learnt how to focus on different cameras and how to use professional cameras properly and what most of the buttons on a camera do. I have also learnt all of the different shot types that you can do on a camera as we used as wide range of them in our opening sequence, whilst learning all of these I also experimented with how to make them better and what type of attachments that I would need to make them better for example tripods or the use of added high key lighting to make a shot brighter or to help balance a shot or using jackets or paper to make the shot appear darker and give contrast to the shots that we used. All of the things that I have learnt were either from my teachers or from looking them up on Google to see how to do specific things.

iMovie - This course taught me how to use iMovie properly as I had never done any editing before or even creating a proper extended video. During the lessons I learnt how to cut clips and shorten and extend them, how to change the contrast of the picture to make it darker and lighter, how to add typography to the video and how to use transitions and sounds to create different effects across the film opening. I also think that using iMovie has helped me realise how much work it takes to create a short film and using an expensive program like iMovie inspired me to get another movie making program called Filmora Movie Maker so that I could do some extra editing at home and create other films with my other work. iMovie also helped me edit my preliminary task and our final product to a good standard so that if others wanted to watch it they could.


Blogger - I had never done any blogging before because I had never really thought about blogging as a form of sharing information. I learnt how to write posts and create my own account to post my work on and how to use all of the aspects of blogger for example the HTML tab to embed videos from YouTube and to make sure that they are added directly to the blog and also how to add links to my blog so that other people can check out the other people that helped me do certain tasks and see other things like my blog if they were interested. Blogger has also helped me record all of the things that I have done so far with my opening sequence for example what I looked at to give me inspiration and what I did on my filming days etc.















Prezi - During the creation of my opening sequence I used prezi twice. Prezi is a site which allows you to create a intractable slide show with all of your information in that moves through different animated bubbles to show your audience the information that you have added. It was a really useful website for creating a grouped mind-map which had several different aspects on it all talking about different things, the animation patterns helped to group different points together to help the viewer make sense of them, it also allows you to embed pictures and videos onto your presentation as well which was really useful for the different tasks. When I first used the site it gave me an introduction video to show me how to use all of its different features and make sure that my presentation was how I wanted it to be.


YouTube - I had used YouTube quite a lot before starting this course but that was mainly to watch different videos from different channels, during this course I also learnt how to create my own channel and upload my own videos for others to see. It was a very useful site to use and it would also allow you to edit your videos on the site if you wanted to do that which was a really helpful feature. However, although this was a good website I did start to have some problems with copyright strikes on my videos which I was analysing which I managed to overcome by using another really useful site called Vimeo,this site doesn't have copyright claims and with a free account it allowed me to upload backups of my videos in case any of them were blocked and people couldn't see them. Both of these sites also allowed for high quality videos to be uploaded and watched which was really helpful because you could see your final video in HD quality which made them look so much better.


Dafont - We used Dafont to find our typography for Safe-Zone X. It's a really useful site which I have used before to find all different types of downloadable typography designs that have been added by different people. It is a really simple to use website and the downloads are all free to do and add the chosen typography design as an alphabet to your computer so that you can use them in other work and on Microsoft etc. From this site I have learnt how to add the different typographies to your films so that the typography is more advanced and stands out.


GoConqr - GoConqr is a website that allows you to create mind-maps and allows other people to see them as well. This website helped me to create certain mind-maps for my research and was generally useful because you can add pictures and videos of different things as well as hyper-links in case other people want to see where you go your ideas from. This website helped me to publish my research for my opening sequence and therefore it was a very useful site.


Spiderscribe - Another website that did really good mind-maps was spiderscribe. They allow you to make different mind-maps and add pictures and videos as well as maps in case you wanted to show extra information. It was a really easy to use website and it had a really good tutorial which showed you how to do different things and make sure that you were ok with how to work everything.


Survey Monkey - Survey Monkey was the site that we used to do an audience survey to find out what type of things they would want in our opening sequence. On this site you can post surveys for people to fill in and then take the results and show them to other people. It was really useful in order to get some feedback from different aged people in order to improve our opening sequence.


Slide Share - This website lets you share presentations with other people from around the world, it helped me with some of the research that I had to do for my opening sequence and it also helped me share some of the slides that we used to show our results. It is a simple website to use and it gives easy instructions on how to add the sides and post them so others can see them.


Voki - This website allows you to create an avatar and get it to speak about whatever you want. I used this website to create a directors commentary about the director Greg Mottola. We used it as another media to give information to people.


Timetoast - Timetoast is a website that allows you to create timelines of different events to share with other people. I used this software to help create a timeline of coming of age films over the past 50 years that also gave a small amount of information about each film. It was easy to use and very helpful in giving an accurate timeline of all the films which I included in an easy to read document.


Overall the technology that I have used throughout this project has helped me create my opening sequence, and has taught me a lot of new information regarding all of these websites and technologies.