Media evaluation

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

Our film belongs to the horror genre, supernatural horror more specifically, and obeys many of the conventions of said genre. The lighting, for the most part, is dark as are the environments themselves. There is little dialogue between characters, making it feel more lonely and what few lines are said between characters are usually short, or mere "goodbyes".  

Our title sequence is a simple panning shot of a dark, moody looking river, followed by a zoom in on a cross. As simple as it is, it does a good job of setting the tone for the film. The zoom in on the cross does not necessarily tell the audience what's happened or what will happen, but gives them the idea that it is actually a significant part of the film in some way.

To cut to the next scene we faded to black, and back out into the scene itself. 

We decided that we would do this because it serves two purposes;

1: It gives the audience a sense of time passing by

2. It Would fit the film far better than a jump cut would.

The contrast between the two scenes was almost stunning. The first shot was dark, ominous and slow. The next it was bright and almost cheery. The fade to black made this more apparent, I feel. 

Question 2: How does your media Product Represent particular social groups?

Our film both conforms and challenges stereotypes of different groups of people. We do so subtly, to avoid distracting the audience and diverting their attention away from the events of the film.

One example would be the fact our film focuses on a male who is in danger. Usually it is a female who is being attacked, or under threat, but here our roles have been swapped around. However, it may also be seen as conforming, since he is able to save himself using his own intuition, where as women in films usually have to rely on a male or a group of characters to survive and rarely do so on their own.

Reversed gender roles

We also conform and challenge the stereotype of teenagers, as well. For instance, in one scene Archer, the male lead, heads up to his room and sulks. This is conforming to the stereotype that teenage boys are all moody. 

A moody teenager

However, rather than present them as loud, impudent and chaotic, the teenage characters here are quite reserved and quiet. This is shown through the dialogue, or the lack thereof. Most scenes containing more than one character contain very little dialogue spoken between the two, which is apparently rather unusual for a teenagers.

Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

In all honesty, I think it would be much more likely for our film to be approved and produced by a smaller company, such as Hammer. 

This is due to the fact that the films made by the bigger American companies like Fox and Warner Bros tend to be concepts that are guaranteed to make money (Sequels, spinoffs or films based upon franchises with already existing fanbases)

Our film would not be guaranteed to bring in the "big bucks", so to speak, and would probably only attract a smaller audience. That said, horror films tend to make a good profit when aimed more at teenagers than other age profiles, though with our film being a 12a it is likely this would not count for us, since teenagers tend to be attracted to the films that seem more horrific or disturbing than what our film offers (old style paranormal horror). Because of this our film would only receive a small budget, meaning we would probably be better with a smaller independent company than a large one. We would probably be given a small budget, since less money spent is less money lost if the film bombs.

Hammer may choose to distribute our film as Hammer is one of the best known British film production companies and primarily produce horror films, similar to our own. It is an independent company and so we would likely have more chance of our film being produced there.

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our film would be marketed towards people aged 12-40, primarily teenagers, who frequently go to watch horror films at the cinemas with friends or family. We would advertise to a specific gender, and our film would be appealing to both males and females in those age groups.

For our pre-production, we conducted a series of questionnaires sent to people through facebook to ensure a wide variety of results we sent them to a large number of people and asked them to forward it to their friends. Unfortunately this didn't work as well as we had hoped and we did not get as many replies as we expected.

What replies we did get we read carefully. We took what they said into consideration and implemented things they suggested  to the film itself. This would help us draw in our audience, implementing things they would like to see into the film. One example of something that was suggested that made it into the film was the title sequence. Someone suggested we do a shot of a lake, and we thought this was a good idea, and so we used it, as well as parts of our original idea, in the film.

Question 5:

I think we may have met our goals to attract the target audience we were looking for. We used a cast that was roughly the same age as the people we expected to watch the film, which helps the audience feel more involved and helps them relate to the characters much better than an adult/young child can (as it’s likely they would share similar thoughts or reactions to the characters on screen). As well as make them a similar age to our target audience, we also made them have similar interests and tastes, providing a range of differing clothing styles and the posters on the wall in the room were also quite varied in taste.

The majority of different styles

We followed the codes and conventions of horror films, meaning we would probably attract the types of people who enjoy these kinds of film, who are also our target audience. For example, many scenes are dark, our opening title sequence has a strong sense of foreboding and interaction between characters is minimal, instead focusing on reactions and silence.

An example of a bad shot

Some of our shots were good, but a few were clearly lackluster  We should have picked up on this and reshot them rather than including them in the film, but we did not notice until filming was complete. The majority are overall fairly good, however, though these few shots may only serve to deter an audience, rather than bring them in as it breaks immersion and reminds them they are actually watching a film rather than being there, in the shot.

Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I have learnt a great deal about the technology and software we have used since we began pre-production of our film and continued to learn more throughout.

Before we even began making our film we had to sign up and use Blogger, a blog service (hence the name) that allows you to quickly and easily provide updates on your progress. We all had to contribute in some way to the blog.

First off, we had to develop our script before we actually shot the movie. To do this we had to use Celltx, a piece of software that allows you to write professional movie scripts, among other things. We decided that Eden (seeing as we were using her story) should write the script for us.

An example of Celtx (Obviously not our script)

When it came time to film, we used a Panasonic  video camera. This was useful as it was small, easy to carry and was relatively high quality.  We all had to film at some point, so all of us had to know how to operate the camera.

Finally there was post-production and editing. Here we used a piece of video editing software (specifically designed for Macs) called Final Cut Express. It is an in depth tool and required a good deal of understanding to use. Because of this we dedicated one member of the group (Eden, again) to learn how to use Final Cut, while the rest of us continued with Blogger work or looked for sound effects or music to put into our film.

Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I feel I have learnt much since my preliminary task. In the preliminary task we only really knew about the techniques of shot reverse shot, 180 degree rule and match on action. Since then we have learnt a great number of camera shots such as; Pan shots, tracking/dolly shots and high/low angle shots. We also learnt about different types of transitions; Cuts, dissolves, fade ins or iris'.

We implemented some of these techniques into our 2 minute film. We included a variety of angled shots, pans, fade ins, tracking shots as well as the three techniques we knew from the start.

This shot used a pan

I believe we have gotten better at match on action and the 180 degree rule, though I feel shot reverse shot was lacking in our 2 minute film. The reason I believe this was because we never once broke the 180 degree rule, always keeping the shot facing the same general direction. We used a good number of shots which included match on action and most looked almost seamless. 

<-------These shots use--------> 

             match-on-action