Saad's Evaluation

Coursework Evaluation


Our media project consisted of 4 working individuals, Ashley Brierley, Rebecca Livesey, Lyndsay Alderson and myself, Saad-Ali Khan. Our project is based on a young man who is on the first steps of his dream which is to one day become a professional footballer and hopefully make it to the big stage. We focus this by filming his punishing but rewarding routine which consists of a healthy diet, training every day no matter what and ultimately showing the dedication that is needed at this stage if he wants to progress. My particular contributions to this task varied, I mainly directed what shots should be took where and what kind of shots should be took in order to produce an outstanding effect, on the other hand I had other minor parts such as acting for a very short while, filming with the camera and also planning.
The genre of this opening sequence is originated from the sport background. Some people could be confused by the title of the project ‘Trial + Error’ but once we explained to our audience how this fits in with the film, they fully understood. If looked at from a broad perspective this could attract the attention of any target audience, but in particular the ones that could be in the same situation as ash, and this is where we know that in some senses it feeds out inspiration to the younger audience out there. We believe that our innovations proved to be highly successful as when the other students viewed this they had a very velar understanding as to what genre it was and in particular the message we were trying to establish. Dave Chadburn from our media group suggested “I definitely knew what the opening was about, it was also good because it was energetic and entertaining to watch.
Our aim was to keep our opening as simple as we could but on the other hand for it to be effective as it could be, we conducted this with a number of elements, firstly was the choice of costume. Ash was training in a typical football outfit, which was blue shorts and a blue top, also a training jacket.

Appearance is key and as modern day football underdogs stereotypically have short haircut and a natural medium build, we thought the Ash was the perfect fit for our project. We filmed ash carrying out a number of activities, such as running, showboating with the football and also maintaining his healthy diet which is key in order for this underdog to succeed. This represents Ash as a no longer a boy, but him transferring himself into a man, a hard working man who is hungry for his never-ending success. I feel our use of lighting was clever as we start of the clip with Ash led in bed reflected by some low key lighting, also at this point there is hardly any music but only the ambient sound of the alarm clock sounding in the background, we feel this creates a sudden sense of realism and alarms the viewer. After a short while, literally 5 or 6 seconds the lighting transfers from low key to high key as soon as Ash releases himself out of bed, suddenly we change clip to show ash running, the lighting now transfers from low key to high key and we also injected fast paced, enthralling music which suits the condition of Ash’s training session, quick, fiery and energetic. This feeds out many generic conventions already such as, willingness and hard work. The use of parallel sound here we feel is very effective. Fast paced editing helps us convey this message to all viewers, also another vital message is that we want to portray the image in other peoples minds that ash is different to modern day teenagers who to be fair are stereotyped as non-energetic and very lazy. The representation is highly challenging, in this clip there are multiple times where we think strong feelings are conveyed. One of them is where Ash gets himself out of bed to train, not to go out, not to go on the computer, not to have a lie in, but to train, we think that the message conveyed here is that sacrifices’ have to be made if you even want a chance of success in life.
We as a group have discussed why we feel that media institutions could be highly interested in our product. We researched other opening sequences to films that we feel have the similar genre and context such as, rocky, million dollar baby, and goal. Using the website imdb.com we also read feedback left by people saying what they think of the film, following this we once again read the feedback we received and compared. It is the energy and desperation that I feel our opening sequence has the others don’t, also I feel that the use of camera techniques, such as handheld camera recording, and our vast range of close ups we have used, we understand that this opening sequence could have a very strong chance of being considered to be made into a film.
I feel that a target audience of around about 16-21 would sound very reasonable and ultimately understand that it is this age group that would mostly be interested in watching the film. Also this target audience is potentially the best to target as it is this age group who are dominating the cinema’s these days and go out more than any other age group. Secondary target audiences could very easily be formed, such as the 10-16 age range, but we feel that this wont have the astonishing effect that our first age group would possibly have.
We at the end of the clip leave the audience with a knowledge of ideology. They understand that this is a boy who wants to make it to professional football. However we leave them with many possible enigmas at the end such as “ Will he actually make it? “, “What’s going to happen to him next” this obviously indulges the audience into wanting to watch more of it. Our use of lighting and time of filming made it easy for the audience to understand all chronic features. They knew that Ash was training in the day as we converted from the alarm clip straight to him training, this conveyed the message that he has gone straight to his training regime. On numerous occasions using the camera we gave the audience a vivid understand of the environment he was surrounded by, an extreme long shot of the fields covered in snow, handheld camera, when he was running down the steps to emphasise the uncertainty and instability of him, and also close ups of his feet while doing tricks which made it dynamic and finally extreme close ups of his face, showing the seriousness and determination of Ashley.
I definitely learnt how to use different aspects of modern day technology throughout the time of this task, I learnt how to film using different techniques and also how lighting and editing would effect the outcome of the final product.
I as an individual feel that I contributed generously to this task, but on other occasions feel that I had let the group down as I was absent. Speaking from a broad perspective we as a group feel that we have all worked terrifically well together, and formed a great understand between each other taking on board each others comments and showing respect. I feel that we worked to out full potential on this task and feel that it a job very well done by all of us.