Evaluation 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

For our first evaluation question, we tried to make it seem as if the stars of the movie are approached by paparazzi. To do this we had Harmony and Rhyss, who play Eclipse and Hades, walk out first but not answer the question. Then the four of us walk out and are asked the evaluation question.

The first thing we mentioned is the racial balancing in Hollywood. There was a lot of controversy around the Oscars recently due to the fact that there were no black nominees. This caused a lot of people to accuse Hollywood of being racist and not culturally diverse. To challenge this we decided to include more black actors than we have white. We did this successfully by including 5 black actors (Michael, Yassir, Kofi, Efue and Rhyss) and only 3 white actors (Charlie, George and Harmony). However, to ensure that the argument does not sway in the other direction, we decided to split the main characters evenly by having the group consist of Odin and Hulk as the white members and Oracle and Reaper as the black members.

We then discussed how we used similar shots, camera angles and lighting to those used in real media products. For example, in our inspiration from real media we mentioned how in the Avengers trailer, there was a shot of Black Widow in a naturally lit room by herself, as the only female lead. We also did this in a shot of Eclipse practicing using her nunchucks in the mirror with sunlight shining through the window in the mirror. We also mentioned the lighting in the groups 'base'. The shots in the base were filmed in a basement that only had one light. We made use of this by positioning the Government Official and Eclipse where the light would shine on the but positioned the team where they are sort of in the shadow. This is to show that although the group have good intentions, some of their methods may seem dark. We also "borrowed" a certain shot type from the Hitman: Agent 47 trailer where he is in an interrogation room. In that particular shot, they use 3 quick cuts to show how he can take out his targets swiftly. We used this to show Eclipse's skill when she is first introduced to the team by including 3 quick shots of her taking out a guard.

Music was also mentioned. An important factor of our opening sequence last year was the use of "Power" by Kanye West as our music and were originally planning to use another Kanye West song for our trailer. However, after watching a couple of trailers we thought that those which used music without lyrics created more suspense. This lead us to search for music which would fit the structure of our trailer. We put a couple of song into consideration, such as "Ethos" by Full Tilt and "Dark World" by Sons of Pythagoras. But we ended up using "Monolith" by Twelve Titans as it fitted our trailer structure by starting quietly and fairly calmly before slowly building up and creating suspense.

We decided to introduce a female character after we received criticism for having an all male cast last year. At first we wanted the female character to be working for Kronos. This was inspired by Gazelle from Kingsman: The Secret Service who worked for Richmond Valentine, the main villain. However, we decided to follow The Expendables 2 by introducing a female government agent who is assigned to work with the group.