Evaluation

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

Our finished film uses many of the conventions of a modern thriller genre, 'Thrillers are characterised by fast pacing, frequent action, and resourceful heroes who must thwart the plans of more powerful and better equipped villains.' This is the classic description of a 'thriller', and our film uses that description to influence our project, however we were obviously unable to embody all of those traits in the opening 2 minutes of a film, so we tried to show what would lead into those characteristics for a film.

It is clear from these two screen shots, how we have stayed within the conventions, as these are very similar positions. It is a position you find someone in when they are scared, or confused and thus, they are often found in horror/thriller type films.

Again, these two shots are not similar in substance, however both characters are doing everyday things, and that is essential to the horror/thriller genre as it adds essential realism to the plot. Both women are doing mundane things, such as coming home, and working, and both are very near the beginning which shows how the audience are intended to create a link with these women before anything supernatural happens to them, so that when it does happen, it increases the involvement the audience feel with the film.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film is quite singularly based on the main character for the first 2 minutes, and therefore is only able to represent the woman, the character to whom the voice in the voiceover belongs to, and the murderer.

The voice is female and direct, and the indication is that she is a doctor and of high education. Immediately this voice brings in an older target audience, due to the terminology and language she uses, which could be quite confusing.

For our main character, what we were looking to do, was to create an authorial figure who has fallen from an educated background, so that educated people could feel an affinity with her character. However it is intriguing to the less educated to see how; a woman of such high social standing is capable of getting herself into such a horrific mess. The woman is shown in various scenes, and her costume varies as does the setting with each change of scene.

The murderer, connotes the typical 'bad guy' in a film, you cannot see his face, he wears black and he is very mysterious, therefore, apart from representing criminals, he can not officially represent any kind of social group.

These are the 3 locations and costumes that the woman has, and in the first she wears a suit, and she is outside a house, this appeals to a varied audience, and the disorganisation of the side of the house could perhaps suggest more about this woman's character.

The costume of the second scene is a hoody, tracksuit bottoms and trainers, and the film is becoming less focused on being for, and about educated people. As variation sets in within costume and setting, the representation of social groups becomes difficult to decipher, as such a range of groups are being represented however, it does turns towards a more teenage audience due to costume, this is again, intriguing for a lesser educated audience as they see different aspects of this woman, and the ways in which she is mentally and socially changing. In the third shot, the woman wears pajamas, and the room she is in is quite dark and therefore shows very little about any sort of social class representation.

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

When choosing a distribution company for this film, I would be inclined to choose Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), our film is predominantly British, and so it would be a huge boost for the film to be supported by a successful American distribution company such as MGM, it would increase audience interest immediately, creating a great platform to intrigue them. The fact that our film is an Psychological Thriller, may attract MGM, because they have had some involvement with thrillers in their past, and it would increase their large repertoire. 'Asylum' (2008) is an example of the type of Horror/Thriller that MGM has produced, it proved successful and so would increase the interest of distributing another film in a similar genre, with a female as the leading character, as is in our own film; female leads have shown to be increasingly popular by audiences and so by taking another chance with this genre, it could be big. This is furthermore, due to the fact that the thriller genre is becoming hugely popular, as has been shown by the recent release of 'Shutter Island'. This film is therefore liable to attract a lot of people, despite being a small British made film.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for our film is from teenagers to around 40 year olds, this was because an older audience are highly interested in psychological thrillers, as they like the challenge it produces, so by aiming at these audiences, we are able to produce maximum revenue, we therefore made it so our locations were somewhat tasteful and the overall mise-en-scene contributed to this audience. To begin with, the rating of 12A appealed to us the most, because it would allow a larger range to come and view the movie, therefore increasing its popularity and in turn, the Box Office totals. However, in order to achieve the psychotic twist we needed to keep the audience gripped,we felt the need to raise the rating.

Therefore, we chose the rating of 15, so that we could add the psychotic twists and the bloodlust to achieve the desired effect. Therefore this film would appeal to older teenagers and from then, ranging up to older audiences. There is no specific limit on the age limit of people who come to see this, as an older audience could be interested in this genre, however, the minimum age is 15 to view this film; all that matters is that the wide stream audience meant for this movie understand and enjoy the film, hence making it a success.

How did you attract/address your audience?

To begin with, we produced a questionnaire, here are 3 examples of the results we received:

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We received around 20 responses for our questionnaires, and have averaged out the response for those we received, and therefore adapted our final production on what the target audience is most interested in. We asked, 'What is your favourite movie genre?' The response rates were highest for thriller/horror, we also asked what an audience wanted to see in their film, with these results we collaberated and decided on doing a Thriller/Horror with a psychotic twist. We designed the film specifically so that the audience would be asking questions throughout and then revealing the answers slowly to involve the audience, so that they have the feeling that they can help solve the mystery.

If we were making a feature length film, we would produce trailers giving a quick insight into the film, but leaving the audience wanting more, television ads to provoke awareness of this new film, and posters placed strategically around to arouse audiences to come and see the film.

We also produced a quick poster:

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

Digital Video Camcorders

We were unable to gain access to a HD camcorder, and so we used a Canon MV930 for all of the shots we needed for our film. Unfortunately, it did not pick up a lot of detail and so the end result was not as professional as we would have like it to be, however, we did our best with what we had, and we were able to what we wanted to. We found that the camera had difficulty picking up images in darkness, which gave us a lot of useless extra footage, because after attempting to edit the brightness and gamma unsuccessfully, we went out and re-shot the footage in daylight. Although we did not have the most professional camera available, I believe what we had taught us all it could about using a camcorder and we have come to terms with using them very well.

Apple Macs

I am an Apple Mac user, however I had not come into contact with the editing programmes, Final Cut Express and LiveType. It was a really interesting experience learning how to edit our film and being able to change so much with the extensive tools Final Cut provides. We were able to add and remove audio as we so chose to do, and we were able to create music on Garage Band, which again was a learning curve as there is so much to learn, all of these programmes helped us achieve our final film.

We dragged all the clips from our film into Final Cut Express, and edited them to the extent that we could. We then used Garage Band to create a background music to intensify the film, we also used it to record a voiceover which plays throughout. LiveType was the programme we used to create the titles for the film, we were able to play around with fonts, colours, animations, and it was really exciting learning all these new things.

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

Our preliminary task taught us the basic skills of camera mobility, and film editing. We learned how to simply use the editing software at that stage, however in the time between the two films, we learned the importance of camera angles and lighting and how they affect the overall piece. We progressed from the simplistic beginnings of the editing software and learnt how to do many things such as changing the brightness, removing sound and so on. We learnt that planning is essential to filming, because if you don't plan then nothing really goes right, I really feel like I have progressed hugely since the beginning of the year because I have learnt so many new aspects to film making and the theory of film making.