Carl Francis

13C-PP
Media Studies
 Running – Plot Summary
• “Running” is the
story of “Shanice”,
a young girl in with
the wrong crowd.
The film shows us
a day in the life of a
troubled youth, and
the one choice that
will change her life
forever…
 Basic Information
• Length: – 4:38
• Target Audience:
Males and Females
aged 14-21
• Genre: Drama
• Market
Segmentation: C2-E
 Market Research
Kidulthood: - We wanted
to create a drama based
around the idea of the
daily struggles that youth
face. Kidulthood deals with
this issue giving a very
specific, detailed example of
youth and gang culture.
http://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=DEekOrsjFIA
Spin: This short film allowed
us to get a taste of how to
connote a multitude of ideas
in a shorter space of time.
The film was based around
youth so it links well to our
product.
http://
shootingpeople.org/watch/film.php?film_id
=618
Trainspotting: Whilst this film
does not refer specifically to
youth culture, we were
interested in the idea of how
to use a voiceover and how
to effectively use a
voiceover. The opening
sequence of Trainspotting
gave us an example of how
to do this by juxtaposing and
intermingling diegetic sound
with the voiceover.
http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v
=koP4O6QAzx4&feature=
PlayList&p
=5881F2BFCE68FA4C&playnext_from=
PL&playnext=1&index=1
 Planning
Storyboard: Using “CellTx”, we were able
to create a Digitalstoryboard, allowing us
to plan our shot types, camera positioning
and plan the placement of the
protagonists. Even Though we had to
change our setting from time to time due
to the fact that the location was
unavailable (i.e the park was closed), it
still helped us to explore the possibilities
of our Camerawork. Also the actors we
used for the storyboard were either not
the same person they would be playing in
the film or were not in the film altogether,
howerver, we still thought that it was a
valuable experience as we were able to
get a glimpse of what our film could look
like.
 Poster Redrafts/Script Redrafts
How we got the red effect in Adobe
Photoshop:
1.Image – Adjustments – Threshold
2.Image – Adjustments – Channel Mixer-
Move “Red” bar to middle
3.Image – Adjustments – Invert
4.Image – Adjustments – Channel Mixer-
Move “Red” bar to middle
5.Image – Adjustments – Invert
What the red effect does: Red represents
anger, an emotion which all of our
protagonists would be all too familiar with.
We decided that it would be best to show
the protagonist in red as it reflects her state
of mind when she stabs Nicole.
 Running – How does it use, develop and/or
challenge Forms and Conventions of real
media products?
• Typical of genre: The film represents youth negatively (a common
representation in the majority of today’s media). This affect has been
achieved by reflecting the stereotypes shown in contemporary media.
• Toderov – Our film does not conform to Toderov’s theory whilst there
is an equilibrium and a disequilibrium, we chose not to return to an
equilibrium, as we wanted a degree of verisimilitude in our film;
sometimes things don’t always work out the way you expect them to.
• Propps character types – Whilst we have studied Propp’s work, we
chose not to give our main protagonist a specific type. We wanted an
active audience; an audience that would decide for themselves the
type of character that Shanice is.
• Use of a female protagonist – different to what we saw in the other
products we looked at.
How effective is the combination of the film,
the film poster and the film review?
• The common link between the film, article
and poster is the theme of red. Red
represents anger and hatred, an emotion
which our protagonist would be all too
familiar with.
 Target Audience
• This film would be aimed primarily at
youth, both those who can relate to the
characters in this film and those who
wouldn’t be able to comprehend the
reasons why the protagonist would lash
out in the way that she did.
 What have you learned from
audience feedback?
• Questionnaire – Our questionnaire
showed us that drama was a popular type
of film. Whilst comedy was extremely
popular, we realised that a comedy was
subjective and as such we felt that it would
be much harder to create a product which
everybody within our target audience
would appreciate.
 How did you use media technologies in the
construction, research, planning and
evaluation stages?
• Final Cut Pro – We used this programme to create the film.
• Adobe Photoshop – We used this programme to create our poster
• Adobe Indesign – Indesign allowed us to create our film review
• Youtube.com – This website allowed us to post our video online
• Blogger.com – We used this to record our progress
• Surveymonkey – We used this website to get initial audience
suggestions.
• Celltx – CellTx was a free programme that allowed us to create
scripts and storyboards which helped us to plan our work
• Microsoft Office (Powerpoint and Word) – These programmes were
very helpful when typing up initial suggestions (such as the
treatment) and planning our ideas.
 Conclusion
• I feel that the final product
was an effective and hard-
hitting drama. Even though
time was our main
constraint (with regards to
both the length of time we
had to create the product
and the 5 minute restriction
on the length of the film) I
believe that we have
created a film that would
meet audience demands.