media evaluation draft

In the MEST2 of Media Studies we the media students had to make a production and print work which was part of our coursework. The production we had to make was an opening sequence of a new programme which would be starting, so we would have to do a two minute sequence to promote our new programme. I worked with Rohail and Daniel in my production and we believed that the institution that would distribute our new programme would be E4 as it would be something similar to what you would watch on E4 already and our pre production also helped us come up with this conclusion. The print work involved making a front cover of a magazine in where our production would be promoted and also a double page spread to also promote the movie or some of the actors, I chose the route of an interview with the main actor in our production.

Within our pre production we did some research that would help us with our production. Firstly we done some research on similar programmes to the genre of E4, this included shows such as Top Boy and Luther. We then analysed the opening sequence of these shows and described things such as mise-en-scene and camerawork as well as talking about the target audiences of these shows. Here is an example of the research I carried out on Top Boy and the camerawork: “We then get an idea of who the main characters may be has the camera starts to focus on three main characters. One character is in his house who can see everything and at one stage we see an over the shoulder shot of him and also various other shots such as close ups to see his emotion...” After this I then done research on institutions such as E4 and BBC 3 which were the two channels which we believed were best suited to distribute our production. Within the research we had to search up about the history and things such as the most successful shows on these channels. We then highlighted our target audience of the shows, using psychographics and demographics to profile our audience. We done this through the research we carried out and also held out a focus group in where we pitched our plan of the movie and the timings we believed were best suitable. The feedback we got from the focus group were that we should think about changing the timings of our show from a Friday as this when most of the people who we are targeting for our show are going out and maybe a Wednesday instead due to programmes such as Eastenders not being on. We also got feedback such as showing a help line at the end of the show due to the plot of the production and also ways on how we could show violence in a less drastic way due to the show being shown during pre watershed.

We believe our target audience would be 17-35 year olds. We say 17 year olds as the characters in the programme will be 17 year olds and the viewers that are 17 could relate to these characters. We also believe it would target a more male audience due to most of the characters being male and with violence being involved it would most likely cater towards males. I also believe its best that E4 would be the best show to view it on as they have a wide target audience. The psychographic group which we think would watch our programme would be aspirers and explorers as they are a mixture of young and materialistic and explorers like to seek discovery and try out new brands. The social demographic group we believe would be 'B' group which involve creative people such as graphic people and links with our own TV programme which shows a different side to teenagers and problems they may face mentally, we also would cater to social demographic groups such as 'C1 and C2' as this group may have a connection with the characters, they are most likely to be working class and as our show is shown at prime time TV for when families are all home together back from work and school they can watch our show after dinner, but mainly a 'B' social demographic group. As we said our psychographic group we believe would aspirers and explorers who are a younger audience, we believe these audiences would listen to rap and R&B music as this type of music is in at the moment and these groups want to be hip and unique so they would listen to music of people such as Tyler the creator and Kendrick Lamar. They would also watch other shows that are similar to this such as Top Boy as this also links in with rap music as some of the actors such as Kano who is one of the main actors in the movie is a rapper. So our target audience can relate to this. If we had done something differently to target our audience we could have maybe targeted a female audience also, by this we could have had maybe a female actor within our opening sequence so that females had something to relate to also, this would have widened our target audience. Also as our show is being shown on prime time TV we could have done maybe more to target mainstreamers as they are the biggest target audience and this too would have also widened our target audience.

Our TV opening sequence is a drama which would be shown on E4 and it involves a schizophrenic and the opening sequence shows us what the schizophrenia does to him. One of the key moments within our opening sequence included the flashbacks of our main character Viraj. This would give the viewers an indication of his schizophrenia, we showed this by showing Viraj when he was sleeping and then him having problems whilst sleeping and then going to the part where he killed someone and to show it was a flashback the scene was fuzzy.

In my print work we had to make a front cover and a double page spread which was linked with our production ‘The Carnage’. I believe my front cover met the key conventions of magazine front covers in many ways. One way is the title of the magazine is in the top third of the magazine on my magazine it was ‘The Carnage’, another convention was that there was a central image and my central image is of Viraj and all the focus is on him as he is the main character. I also had cover lines on my magazine on both sides of Viraj, some of my cover lines were linked with E4 who were going to be distributing my magazine, my cover lines included things such as ‘Troy’s Challenge’ who is a new and upcoming magician on E4 so I would be promoting other shows on E4 but not direct rivals. In my magazine there is also a colour scheme which is a dark red and a dark purple I believe these colours interlinked each other well and they do not look out of place. I chose the red which is related to blood and The Carnage and I chose the purple as I believe it assisted the red well and also purple links with E4 also. Finally I also included as it is a souvenir magazine a little sticker stating that it is free inside the independent, making sure that it is clear and that nothing is misunderstood. Within my double page spread I also met the key conventions, as my double page spread was an interview I had to put my questions in columns as it would look like in professional magazines and I also added a quote next to the interview as a little teaser. Also at the top of the interview I included some cover lines introducing Viraj and a little slogan saying ‘sky is the limit’ so that the readers get a better indication of him. On the page before the interview I included a main central image of Viraj which was a close up and I believe it went well with my double page spread. Finally at the bottom of both pages I included the page numbers, website and the date which is a key convention of double page spreads. I believe the main weaknesses in my print work were the information I needed to include especially on the front cover. By this I mean that I had to adapt my front cover numerous times, this included changing the font as I felt it never stood out and didn’t actually look like a magazine but instead a poster, also that my cover lines weren’t going to connect with the reader and at one stage my cover lines included my competitors such as Dexter and I would have been promoting my competitors which wasn’t the most clever thing to do and also spacing in a way that some spaces on my magazine looked empty and I needed to change that so it actually looked like a magazine. Whereas on the other hand I found it easier to do the double page spread as I wrote out the interview and as the image I picked fitted perfectly in a way that my image was on one side and I had space to write on the other side. The main problems were adjusting the cover lines to make it realistic to Viraj as at first they were not realistic.

I believe the representation of young people we created in our production were the stereotypical views in how young people are portrayed in the media. By this I mean young people are shown as folk devils in today’s society in a way that they are letting everyone down and you can see this through our production in that a teenager kills another person, but as a condition which could link to today’s society in a way that people may not understand why these young people commit these crimes which links to the theory of Dyer in exaggerated views and targeting the weak people in society and in this case it is the young people. Also the theory of Medhurst would be used within our production in that the stereotypical views of young people would be used as a short hand within our production as all young people do is cause trouble. Also as there are only males that are acting within our production it links to Berger and his theory of ‘Men act women appear’ but in this case there was no women appearing and that men are the more masculine and have the power as they are the only ones who can commit crime. I believe it would have been hard for us to subvert stereotypical views of young people within our production as we involved a killing of a young person by a young person so this wouldn’t exactly have subverted the stereotypical views of young people.