616 Amy and Tilly

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? Technologies we used: Panasonic Video Camera Canon EOS1100 Tripod Sony Vegas Pro 13 iMovie Blogger iPhone Adobe Photoshop YouTube Google Research and Planning: When researching and planning our film the main two technologies we used were Google and YouTube. Google was used numerous times for looking up information about our influence films, looking up filming permits for filming in parks with the general public. We also used Google to look up any events that could have been happening on the day we wanted to film. YouTube was used to look at other people's work from previous years. This aided us when we had to work on peer marking other peoples work. Blogging: The main thing we used during blogging was blogger, we did have a few videos from things like the focus group however, due to technical difficulties we were unable to edit it and upload it to the blog. Blogger however wa

How did you attract/address your audience? We had a number of influences from films as mentioned in our post named 'Influences'. The ones we mentioned were 'Ramona and Beezus', 'Bridge to Terebithia', 'Shark Boy and Lava Girl/The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl' and 'Justice'. Ramona and Beezus was a huge influence for our characters. We really wanted them to come off as real and childlike, Ramona is very much like this and therefore become someone we based the character 'Amelia' of off. She has such an overactive imagination that it sometimes comes off as bad but she is just living her childhood to the fullest. Bridge to Terebithia was a big influence in terms of imagination, this film has a huge emphasis on creativity and learning through play. The main character in the film loves to draw and creates his own world through drawing, this was something we wanted to include, it gives it such a great childhood feel, with imaginati

Who would be the audience for your media product? As mentioned in the post about BBFC ratings we metioned that a s a genre, family films are most often aimed at a younger demographic, so therefore are usually rated at PG or a U. Our project would be leaning more towards a PG however, rather than the U rating, due to the more serious content later in the film, as shown on the 'Main Project Pitch' post. The rating would have to consider the mild violence we were hoping to add to our opening, in which the protagonists pretend to fight with bamboo sticks. Other than that, the language is clean and suitable for children, the worst thing said in the script is "shut up", which is considered rude to some parents. We have both a female and male lead this helps appeal to both the male and female genders of our childhood demographic. It allows both genders, boy or girl to have someone to identify with throughout the piece. It also means that both genders may want to go and s

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? There are various production companies that produce and distribute the family film genre, but in particular Walden Media is notable for their contributions to the production and distribution of children's film. Walden Media has assisted in the production of 'Ramona and Beezus', 'Bridge To Terabithia', 'Because of Winn-Dixie', 'Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium', 'Water Horse: Legend of The Deep' and various other live-action, heart-warming children's films from their foundation in 2001. The type of film they specialise in is almost a sub-genre of family film: live-action family films with child actors, often animals and homely-aesthetics. their most recent film being 'A Dog's Purpose', a film about the journey of a dog and reincarnation. This company would be best suited to our film as it follows many of the conventions of the existing films associ

How does your media product represent particular social groups? Amelia/Midnight The characters of Amelia and Midnight represent a middle class, white family archetype. Amelia is of White British decent, has blond hair, green eyes and is a child aged eight. This type of family and character archetype is most often presented in the media in American film, such as Timothy and Theodore Templeton from Boss Baby,  Kevin McCallister in Home Alone,   or Conrad and Sally Walden from The Cat In The Hat. Much like in these examples, our film, to an extent, perpetuates the stereotypes of white middle class families in the sense that the characters are well-dressed, conventionally pretty and appear to have money. Their family also can afford to effectively care for more than one child (total three, but only the two primary characters/siblings are shown in the opening). However, the characters diverge from the typical expectation by exhibiting intelligent behaviours, not adhering to t

PROBLEMS Throughout the production of the film opening, there were several problems that occurred over the course of the production. Many of these problems were as a result of poor pre-planning, but a number were also extraneous, unfortunately. The crew took various actions and made compromises when faced with these hurdles, providing experience for the future and knowledge on what to do if the same problem happened next time. For example, the day of the shoot was picked for a number of reasons: to adhere to the actors’ schedules, for the bright sunny weather that would allow effective filming and the fact that it was a Tuesday in the middle of half term meant that not many people made the journey into the woods to find the park, instead preferring to stay at home. This meant for the early hours of the day, there was hardly anyone at the park, leaving the set virtually clear, which was the ideal situation, as the plan was to film Sadie and Vinnie (the actors) without accidentally