Evaluation
For the project I created an opening sequence to a British sports genre film. I am aiming it at 16 – 35 year olds, as these are the target audience people that most regularly go to the cinema and would be interested in this kind of film, as the main character is a teenager with aspirations which many people can link to. I worked with Rebecca Livesey, Ashley Brierley and Saad-Ali Khan. In the project I contributed to the filming process but contributed a great deal more towards the editing process.
As the opening sequence is a sport genre, particularly football, I have used a range of conventions in the sequence. For example, I used a lot of shots of our main character (Ashley) training and kicking a football.
It was vital I use these kinds of shots to get the message across that Ashley is training for a football trial. I didn’t use typical camera work as I filmed some of them with handheld camera, which did make it look less professional, but in the end looked good when I edited them together with the better shots. We used shots such as close ups on his feet and low angles to show off his speed and dominance over his training. 
It is important to do something new to the genre as it appeals to the audience and makes them more interested to watch the film. I believe as a group that our idea for the film sequence would be successful as sport is popular with most teens and a sport-orientated film would also be popular. I found out in our research that other sport films such as Goal and Bend it like Beckham were very popular with our target audience. Goal made £857,253 in its opening weekend, and Bend it like Beckham made £2,001,795.The choices I made with the project worked effectively as the genre, main character, plot etc. was clear and easy to understand.
There is one particular social group that I have represented in our film. Young people are represented in a positive light as I am showing that if a young person has a dream, then they strive to fulfill it and do whatever it takes. I have represented them by showing our main character training in all weathers and in different ways to get him ready for a football trial.
The use of costumes and props (mise en scene) are aspects that help get this message across. The costumes I used were a football kit and street wear, which is very typical of a footballer that also helps get the genre of the film across.
By showing a young person in a positive light I am trying to offer an alternative representation to the audience. Young people are generally shown in a negative light and seen to be thugs or anti social, so I am hoping to send out a message that young people aren’t all the same. By showing our character training in all weathers, the editing of these shots together shows his energy and passion to succeed. Also the fast pace editing helps to convey this.
The opening sequence I have produced is likely to be produced by someone like Fox searchlight pictures, as this company distributed another film of this genre. This was Bend It Like Beckham. They have the money to distribute the film and show it on lots of screens. If an American distributor distributed our product it may appeal to the audience more and sell easier in the UK, as many British distributors find it difficult to sell their films in the UK and abroad without any kind of American input. An American company would want this film because it provides an insight into what teens aspire to achieve and would have global appeal because of the football side of it. Football is a world wide played sport and would be appealing to anyone who plays or watches football themselves. We showcased our sequence to the target audience and feedback shows that the majority enjoyed it as they said things like “I loved it” and said that it made them want to watch the film.
As I have chosen a sport genre, our film is likely to be appealing to anyone who is interested in sport, particularly football. However, our film is aimed at teenagers from 16 - 35 as these are the kind of people that if they are part of a team, aspire to go far in it and therefore do their up most to achieve this. Just like I have shown in our film sequence. Obviously with it having a football theme it is more likely to appeal to boys than girls, but I feel that many girls with enjoy this film too because nowadays there are just as many girls that enjoy football as boys do. Our feedback has shown that girls also like the storyline of our film and would want to watch it.
In our opening sequence, we used a lot of different aspects to attract our target audience, and also used many conventions to clearly get the genre across. Firstly, we set up the equilibrium by introducing the main character in the first shot to show that he is the main character.
By showing him waking up, this leaves enigmas as the audience doesn’t know what the genre is or what he is doing. We then introduced a disruption. This was Ashley jumping up out of bed and instantly starting an active training session. This again leaves enigmas, as we don’t exactly know what he is training for. This is later made clear when we see shots of a poster about football trials, hence the name ‘Trial and Error’.
To create a sense of time passing in the sequence, we showed Ashley training in different places, in different clothes and in different weathers to show his determination to succeed in the football trial. With our opening sequence, I think that we are trying to get the message across that young people aren’t as they are shown to be in the media, as I mentioned earlier I am showing young people in a positive light. As well as showing this, we have tried to create a sense of conflict as this is a feature film. We have created the conflict that he is racing against time to get himself ready for the football trial, this is shown with him training a lot in all weathers. One aspect we have used to make an interesting looking sequence is the music and editing. I have used a soundtrack that is upbeat and edited the shots in a fast pace to fit with the music and help get a sense of the genre.
From the process of constructing this product, I have learnt a great deal about technologies. I have learnt a lot about how to use imovie, such as complex features to create effects, but there are aspects of it that I am still unsure about how to use. As well as using new things to create the product, I have also used old technologies that I am familiar with. I used the Internet to search on sites like youtube.com to look at other opening sequences with the same genre as ours in order to get a sense of how ours should look. There weren’t any real limitations when using the moviemaker software to create our product, I found that we were able to use the software to create the kind of opening sequence we wanted to. In the process of making our product, I worked out how to use features such as embedding video to put our preliminary task onto our blog page.
Looking back at the preliminary task, I feel that I have progressed a lot. When I made the preliminary task with the others in my group, we made a few simple mistakes such as not having the correct angle on a shot and editing them together in a way that made it look jerky. I feel that in the final product this was not the case as editing didn’t look jerky or out of place and we had all the right angles on our shots. For example, the close up shot of his feet running and kicking the football and the shot where he jumps over the camera and runs off. As well as this, we didn’t really manage to get the story across well in our preliminary task. As the shots were jerky it made the conversation between Rebecca and Ash look very unrealistic, but I was able to create a good story and realistic looking editing in our final product.
Overall I feel that the project went well. A key strength was us being able to work well as a team to create a good opening sequence. As well as us being able to work well together I feel that there were weaknesses in the process. One of these is the fact that we were keen to get all the shots done in a short space of time to allow us more time to edit the shots together, but by doing this many of our shots weren’t at good angles or were wobbly. Aside from this, the feedback we have received has shown that people enjoyed it, were able to understand the storyline and would want to watch the film, so this shows our film sequence is a success.
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