Evaluation

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

Our media product works within the horror genre, so we have included various conventions seen in horror films. Using our knowledge and research of horror films we noticed that the locations used are often dark and gloomy places such as dungeons, cellars and dark alleys, as well as isolated suburban houses. Examples of horror films we have adapted this idea from include the Saw series and the Halloween, Friday the 13th and Scream franchises. We developed this into the opening of our media production with the first shot being on a gloomy street at night.

Another common convention in horror films is building tension, by making the audience fear a killing will take place. We adapted this into our media production by using certain camera shots such as handheld camera shots and over-the-shoulder shots to build up tension, and signify to the audience that they are seeing through a stalker’s eyes; that the protagonist is in danger. As well as this we used scary music to build up the tension throughout the production. The large range of shot types used is typical of a horror genre.

From our research we discovered that it is normal for a ‘Scream Queen’ (blond, busty, sexually available) to be killed in the opening scenes of a horror film. We challenged this by introducing Emily who is the ‘final girl’(brown-haired, strong-willed, intelligent, virginal) in the opening scenes, which then showed her possibly, have a close escape from the antagonist without realising – the audience is given a privileged point-of-view. Emily was our best choice to cast as the character (Emily) because out of the possible actresses available she resembled a final girl the most. This is a link to the casting page in our blog which has an picture of the actor and actress we used in the production. http://alexsmediawork.blogspot.com/2009/04/cast.html.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Comes under "Who would be the audience for your media product?"

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

The type of media institution that would be likely to produce our media product would be a small company which tends to harness low budget productions like Donkey Punch and turn them into high value movies that can reach world wide audiences. Two examples of UK film production companies that fall into that category include Warp X and WT2.

For funding to produce our media production we would look to companies that like to encourage young film makers e.g. EM Media, Film4 and Screen Yorkshire. Screen Yorkshire would be likely to fund our media production because it is one of their traits to encourage young local talent.

One possible distribution company that would be likely to distribute our media production would be Universal. Universal is the most successful distributor of Uk movies and also distributes all of Working Titles productions.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The age rating for our media production is 15 (This means that: No theme is prohibited, provided the treatment is appropriate to 15 year olds. There may be frequent use of strong language (e.g. 'fuck'). But the strongest terms (e.g. 'cunt') will be acceptable only where justified by the context. Continued aggressive use of the strongest language is unlikely to be acceptable. Nudity may be allowed in a sexual context but without strong detail. There are no constraints on nudity in a non-sexual or educational context. Sexual activity may be portrayed but without strong detail. There may be strong verbal references to sexual behaviour. Violence may be strong but may not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. Scenes of sexual violence must be discreet and brief. Dangerous techniques (e.g. combat, hanging, suicide and self-harming) should not dwell on imitable detail. Easily accessible weapons should not be glamorised. Strong threat and menace are permitted. The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable. Drug taking may be shown but the film as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse. ) and the target audience is 15 - 24 the actors in the film were both 17 which is one of the reasons that the target audience is 15 - 24 as audiences relate better to actors and actresses of their own age. The other reason we chose this age range is we found that the target audience for horror films are mostly youth (15 - 24). The main target audience for the production would therefore be fans of horror films and teen dramas because of the genre of the film and the ages of the actors used. The location and actor and actress that we used would appeal to the upper middle class, lower middle class and the working class (socio-economic groups C1C2DE). This is because the house we filmed the production in is quite a big middle class looking house but the language and accent used by Emily would also appeal to the working class.


How did you attract/address your audience?


Comes under “Who would be the audience for your media product?”


What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?


From the process of constructing our media product I have learnt a lot about iMovie 06 and I have also learnt a lot more about how to use a camcorder efficiently. I found iMovie 06 extremely easy to work with and enjoyed developing the production on it. The things I learnt about iMovie 06 included how to upload footage from a camcorder onto iMovie 06, how to cut and edit clips and then how to put them together to produce a finished product. Trimming clips down was one of the easiest things to do. It just required you to drag two arrows either side of the part of the clip you wanted to trim out and then press cut. As well as this I also learnt how to find music on iMovie or create it and then upload it onto iMovie and incorporate it into the production. You could both drag music from a file to where you wanted it to be on the film or go to import and find the saved music file you wanted to insert.

From using a camcorder to film the footage I learnt a lot more about some of the facilities that are available on a camcorder. I experimented with the night vision option and we applied it to a scene in our production where in normal mode you could not tell what was going on. I also improved the skill of zooming in and out which is quite tricky to do subtly. On one of the shots I noticed that we could have done with some sort of crane to get the high angle shot we were after, as we had to make do with standing on a wall and holding the camera up high to get the desired effect. I developed my skill with a tripod to get a steady camera shot or a quality panning shot.

During the process of creating this media production I have also learnt how to use transitions which can be used to make the switch from one shot to another a lot smoother a more professional. A good example can be seen in our final cut also located on the blog: http://alexsmediawork.blogspot.com/2009/04/final-cut.html.
Just after Emily puts the keys on the window sill the frame fades out and into the next shot of Emily walking up the stairs (49 seconds in).

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

One thing that I have learnt from the progression of my preliminary task to the full product is to be more aware of the lighting when filming. This is because in my preliminary task we did not take the lighting into account and it did not look very good because one persons face was all in shadow. In my media production the lighting is a lot better than it was for my prelim task there is however, one or two shots where it is still a bit darker than we intended. Another improvement I have made since I made the preliminary task is making sure the person in the shot is in the centre of the frame before the preliminary task I had not thought about keeping them in the centre of the frame as much.

I have also learnt that it is a good idea to plan out what you are going to do instead of just picking up a camera and starting filming as we did in our preliminary task. This included coming up with our own initial ideas and writing them down. We then discussed the ideas with the rest of the group before making an initial group idea. For this initial group idea we produced a storyboard(http://alexsmediawork.blogspot.com/2009/04/storyboard.html) this included a quick hand drawn image of each scene and the shot(s) used in that scene. We then used this as a rough guide to follow when filming and developed it where we saw fit.