Evaluation
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For our opening sequence we used quite a lot of the conventions of horror so the audience would feel comfortable and familiar. For research we analysed the openings of horror films, we only had to do one in our group and then present it to the class. This meant we got the benefit of seeing more than one opening sequence and were able to spot conventions and perhaps see things that weren't often included that could make our film opening more unique.
Some of the conventions that we spotted and tried to use in our own film were:
· Night time/ darkness – We shot all our video in the dark as this was very common in horror films. It gives as sense of mystery because in the dark you don’t know what could be out there which is an uncomfortable feeling and hopefully makes the audience feel uncomfortable or worried.
· Youthful/ attractive main characters – We used a young blonde girl as our main character. From our research we noticed a lot of films used young characters, in Friday the 13th (2009) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) they use a whole group of young characters, I think this makes them a lot more vulnerable and immediately has the audience worried for them.
· Eerie/ Isolated location – During the scene of our
character walking we tried to use as many locations as possible that you could associate with horror or something bad. We including poorly light alleyways and a graveyard, we hoped this would give the audience the idea that something bad would happen but it was unknown when.
Something that we tried to avoid was a very gory and unrealistic death scene and we did include a death scene. We tried to show as little as possible but enough so the audience was clear on what happened. We only used a close-up after the character had been killed and whilst she was being killed we used a mid to long shot. We tried to avoid this convention, firstly, because with the resources available to use and the effects we could put on it wo
uld have made it difficult. Also it can look very unrealistic, which would have probably been the case if we’d have tried to do an elaborate death scene, and therefore put the audience off.
We wanted to be safe and for our film to be familiar to the audience so haven’t really challenged any of the typical conventions of the horror. This is because it could look quite bad or not make sense if we were to misjudge it. For example we used a graveyard as one of the locations in our film.
How does your media product represent a particular social group?
Our film only really featured young people, both girls and boys. We thought that our main audience and therefore our target audience was young people of both genders, possible 15 – 25 years of age. If we used the same sort of characters as the people that would be watching it would hopefully give them the idea that it is more likely to happen to them or they begin to like the characters featured more. This would mean they are more attached and maybe more scared.
We tried to make them behave and dress in a way that would cover the broadest group of people as possible. This meant at times the characters clothing was a bit plain and boring but we agreed that it wouldn’t be the most important thing and seeing as it would appeal to a wider audience it was fine like that.
We had a small amount of dialogue in our film and used the actor’s normal voices. This wasn’t a posh accent but wasn’t completely common. Meeting it halfway meant that a wider audience could relate to it to them characters.
Most of our film was filmed on the streets at the eerie locations I referred to earlier. However at the start in the party scene some was filmed at a house. We used an establishing shot so you could see the outside of the house and from this you can tell that the house is reasonably big but there are other similar houses around it so not completely upper calls and out of reach to some. You didn’t see much of the inside of the house as the party scene is in a marquee, so it was difficult to pass any judgements on the inside.
Summarising these points I’d say the main character and the other group of people in the film represent working class and middle class but the upper class could perhaps still relate to some aspects of it.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I think our film would be more suited for a Hollywood film company rather than an art house because we have tried to make it so it appeals and relates to as many groups of people as possible, not just on small specific group. Whilst researching film companies I was looking for one that made films similar to ours. I thought New Line Cinema would be the most appropriate. Horror films they have made include ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’, ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, ‘Friday the 13th’ and ‘Final Destination. ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ loosely relates to our film because the majority of our opening is the main characters dream and the idea of there being a murderer. We tried to avoid making our film similar to ‘Final Destination’ because we thought it can seem unrealistic and put the audience off, so the only way it relates is that both feature a young group of people. However ‘Friday the 13th’ is quite similar, like our film it has one murderer, hidden by a mask, who kills a group of young people. Although in our opening there is only one killing the story could go on to say that the murderer kills more people. ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ is also similar to our film. Like ‘Friday the 13th’ there is one murderer who is sort of wearing a mask and kills a group of young people. Like the killer in our film he has an established weapon, the chainsaw, however our killer uses a knife. A difference between our film and this is that the killer has accomplices in ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ whereas, as far as we know from the opening, ours doesn’t.
The audiences for New Line Cinema’s films can be seen as the same as ours and this is not just the horror films they make. This could be because it is most likely to be young people going to the cinema. Films such as ‘Wedding Crashers’, ‘Austin Powers’ and the horror films mentioned previously share the same type of audience as our film.
Seeing as New Line Cinema is an American film company a lot of their films would be set in America. Obviously we couldn’t have filmed ours in America but I still think this is the most appropriate film company because their films have a similar audience and their horror films a similar theme. The audience would expect to see similar things such as youthful characters and isolated locations.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
My target audience would firstly be male, I think the horror genre is more suited to male because of perhaps the gore or the violence. Also as our main character is a female it could be more suited to males. Their age would be 16 – 17, this is similar to the characters in our film and they could relate to them more as they would possibly act or do the same sort of things. The hobbies and interests of our target audience would include television/films, being with friends and going to parties. They would have to like films to watch one in the first place and in particular horror films. Our film features a party as we thought a lot of young people could relate to this and therefore feel more uncomfortable as a viewer because they could quite easily be in the same situation. They would most likely still be in education at a college or 6th form at that age. Most likely a public school rather than private school because they are probably going to be working class or middle class. As far as income it is likely at that age they would only have a part time job so their income would be small if they had a job at all.
We’ve tried to target this profile by featuring similar aspects in our film. For example the party at the start and all the characters are having a similar profile, except the killer. We choose this sort of audience because we thought they are the most likely to watch this type of film or most likely to go to the cinema and watch it. Also this quite a broad audience and therefore the film can be more successful.
How did you attract/address your audience?
The main way we have addressed our audience is by representing them with the characters in our film. This will attract them because they feel like they know the characters and become more attached to them. We also tried to use other things popular among our target audience such as what the characters are wearing and how they act. This is useful for a horror film because it will draw them into a false sense of security and be more engaged into the film
We haven’t done actual advertising for our film but I think viral advertising for our film would be perfect. Being able to put teasers and trailers on YouTube is good because our target audience would most likely be on YouTube. Social networking sites would be another great way of advertising our film. Our target audience would have a Facebook account so advertising on here in particular could really raise awareness of our film.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Before the preliminary task I’d never really recorded anything properly, so the camera and filming was relatively new to me. We had learnt camera angles and movements in class however so I was able to apply that. We used HD flip cameras to do all of the filming for our film. They were easy to use and didn’t have any issues with them. For the editing we used Final Cut which is a programme foe a Mac. Some people in our group had better experience on a Mac and so did a lot of using the actual technology. I still contributed my thoughts but I didn’t use the technology as much as I would have perhaps liked.
The sound part of our film went quite well. We were able to use a piece of horror themed music that our friend had composed and it fitted our video very well. This also meant there was nothing to worry about as far as copyright. We used a few sound effects, such as a scream, that we got from the internet. This was very easy to put on our video and we had no issues with it. The reason we used a fake scream rather than getting our actor to scream was that it seemed a lot clearer and it was as if the scream was coming out of the whole room rather than just the actor’s mouth. This created a much better effect and created a much better atmosphere in our video.
We never had any major difficulties with the technology when creating our film, occasional something wasn’t quite how we wanted it when editing but this wasn’t really that much of a problem. The biggest problem was when we forgot one of the cameras but we were able to overcome this as the same cameras were available from the school library.
An advantage for us was the resources we were able to use when editing our film. We were able to use a good programme that was easy to use and gave us mostly everything that we wanted so our film could turn out as we imagined it. I feel quite lucky that we were able to use these resources pretty much whenever we needed them and they were very helpful. I am most proud of how our final product turned out after the editing, particularly the murder scene. Using the music and achieving affective camera angles, due to the tripod, meant we could create a lot of tension and therefore bettering our final product and drawing in our audience.
Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?
We didn’t integrate our preliminary task into to our actual film partly because our group had to be split up halfway between them both and also we felt we couldn’t develop the story of our preliminary task very much and it would be much easier to start from the beginning, which it was. The preliminary task taught us a lot that would help us with the main task. Firstly it was a good chance to practise camera angles, we could see what worked well and what didn’t. We learnt that we would need to manage our time better for filming are film and be more organised by giving out certain roles for each person, this meant we were less likely to forget equipment and everybody had something. With our preliminary task we didn’t edit it together which meant some people in the group didn’t see it for a long time and weren’t able to input their ideas. For our actual film we were together when we edited it so everybody contributed in some. Also it meant we came up with a lot more ideas which would benefit our final product. With our preliminary we tried to film too much at one time which led to issues with the light and equipment and we could therefore not get all the shots we wanted. With the main task we filmed on more separate occasions, although it was more time consuming we got a much better range of shots which gave us a lot more freedom when piecing it together. The most important thing we learnt from the preliminary task was that not everything would go as planned. We came across a number of problems during our preliminary but we were much more prepared for our main task and less went wrong and if it did we could deal with it easily.
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