Evaluation of Media Product

Mary Williams

• Narrative structure: Similar to other spy films like James Bond in particular, the opening of Undercover begins with the start of the main characters journey. The phone call is also very typical, with the special agent being given a mission.

• Enigma Codes: What we want to know most when watching the production is who the woman is. We also want to know more about where she is going, it looks as though she is getting ready to go out, like on a date, but other things, like the passports and the documents, suggest that there is more to the story- we want to know about the documents and files, and why her identity is being hidden from us.

• Genre Characteristics: The music especially gives the impression of a spy/thriller film, it is fast paced, and is something that you would expect to find on a James Bond film. The quick paced editing, and the fact that the identity of the main character is hidden is typical of a spy film.

• Mise en Scene: The Mise en Scene doesn't make it clear to the audience who the main character is, the files and documents, maps and computers gives us clues of her type of job, but we only get clues- we are not told what the woman does for a living. The make up and clothing that the woman wears gives us the Impression that she is hard working and powerful.

• Inspiration: The film “Silence of the Lambs” was the idea behind the actual titles, using the Courier font to give the idea of a typewriter, and its the sort of font you would expect secret files to be written in. James Bond was another inspiration, the whole idea of a secret agent who sometimes uses their sex appeal to get what they want, and also the Bond girls for their looks.

• The film Atonement was inspiration behind the typewriter sound, as in that film they use the diegetic sound of the typewriter and make it sound part of the music.

Examples of Font from The Silence of the Lambs.

James Bond and the Bond Girls- inspiration behind main character.

Atonement- inspiration for the typewriter sound incorporated with the music.

INSPIRATION

• Gender representation: The film would have been totally different of the spy was a man, the fact that the main character is a strong and powerful woman is very important. We see that she is very beautiful and glamorous but she has more to her than just her looks.

Millie, who was our main character.

• Class and Subculture representation: She doesn't really belong to a particular sub culture or class, she is obviously very powerful which is displayed by the editing, music and also the clothing and make up, the red lipstick in particular displays that she is confident.

• Age representation: It is not made clear how old the woman is exactly, but we know that she is a young woman, in her late 20’s, so older than Millie, the actress who played her. The make up we used was quite mature, as were the clothes.

• Ethnicity representation: It would not make a difference if the main character was a different ethnicity, it is not an important factor in the narrative. The reason that we used Millie rather than somebody else was that we live in a mono-ethnic, predominantly white society, so we did not have anybody from a different ethnicity to help.

• Within this production the audience would sympathise with the main female character, as it is her who we follow in the opening sequence, we are following her the whole time and see things from her point of view.

• The media institution that we would use to distribute our production would be the “Fox Searchlight” branch of 20th Century Fox, which is used for film that want to be available to a wide audience, but on a budget. Other films that have been part or fully distributed by Fox Searchlight include Slumdog Millionaire (2008), 500 Days of Summer (2009) and Juno (2007).

• The type of cinema chain that would screen our film would be a Multiplex type cinema, because of the mass audience that this film would be enjoyed by, and because of previous success of similar films like James Bond.

• A similar film, “Salt” was shown on over 3000 screens in the USA on its opening weekend, however having Angelina Jolie as the main character it was always going to be a big film. As a smaller budget film Undercover wouldn’t be screened to that extent, even though they are similar in genre.

• Target age group: We would aim this film at an audience base ranging from 15 years onwards to probably late 30’s because of the young stylish main character, who people of this age range may be able to relate to or idolise.

• Target gender: This film would be enjoyed by both genders, females because of the powerful lead role, and also males because of the action and also the attractive young women.

• It is the sort of film that people would go and see in different situations, it is not just suitable for girl’s nights out, but also boys nights out and a date nights, as it is accessible to such a wide audience because there are different factors to appeal to everyone.

•Other films that the audience may have seen and liked would be spy films like James Bond, and the new Angelina Jolie film “Salt”, in which she plays a female special agent.

• Music: Helps to draw the audience into the film opening, it is upbeat and comes on before the actual sequence starts, which helps with the transition between the production company logo and the first pan. The

• Camera and editing styles: both the camera and editing styles are unconventional, they are not invisible, like you would expect in most films, as we have used pans and fades, the pans were used as an introduction to the film; whilst the main character was getting ready the audience were having a tour of her house- the pans make you feel part of the scene, rather than just having a still shot we were able to see the bigger picture.

• Emotional Appeal: With this sequence we feel intrigue towards the woman, because her identity is hidden, both by sunglasses and different shot types like extreme close ups.

• Planning: The planning that we did before we started our production included brainstorming to come up with an initial idea, and once we had got a solid idea we made a storyboard which we then filmed for our animatic.

• Camera and editing work: Before this production I had not used a camera before, or used the editing programme, so it took a while to pick up, but once I new how to use them I found it easy to get used to.

• Sound Mixing: The fact that we could only use non copyrighted music made things difficult because it is very hard to find good copyright free music on the internet. It took hours to find the right song but once we put it into our sequence it fitted well. All we them had to do was adjust the volume on different parts, for example when the titles were on and when Millie was talking.

• Mise en scene: The mise en scene was probably both the hardest and the most important thing that we had to achieve, and admittedly we could have done a lot better with our setting. We could have put more emphasis on things like the files and the passports to give more clues about the type of job the main character had. It is important in a film opening because it sets up the whole film.

• I feel that my skills have developed since the preliminary task a great deal, considering it was the first time I had used the equipment to that standard.

• I found that for the main task I was able to improve my skills on the editing equipment especially, I learnt how to create the type writer effect by layering frames over one another, and also I learnt how to add effects like changing the white balance on specific shots.

• In this production I was much more adventurous with the variety of shots that were used- we included extreme close ups, over the shoulder shots and pans, I felt that the more confident I got with my abilities the more I was able to achieve, and the better our production looked.

• I learnt to capture footage from the camera and put it on the computer whilst doing the preliminary task, so that saved time in the main task as we knew how to do it already.