Evaluation

Evaluation

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

We decided that the best place to add our titles would be at the beginning of our production. The titles at the start show all the people staring in our production followed by the people who were involved in making our production. We decided to start our titles with the people who starred in our production and then decided to continue with the camera man followed by the editor and finally the last title showing the people who were involved with sound and music. To the left of this text are some of the shots that we decided to add the titles to. We decided to put our titles at the beginning as we had seen other films do the same and we felt that they had all been very successful when doing so as well as the fact when we watched other film openings that put the titles at the end of the opening we felt that the opening became quite anti climatic which was something that we wanted to avoid doing when creating our opening. The reason why we chose shots from our film to put the title over was because when we watched other film openings that did the same we felt as if it kept the audience drawn in and interested however if the titles were just put on a black background we felt as if it made the audience would be waiting to long and this would make them loose interest of the film. We decided to make the font colour white as we felt that it stood out the most on the dark background, although we did try other colours as well and none of them were quite as effective as white. We chose quite a small font which was called "MingLiu-Ex tb" as we thought that the font was easy to read and looked professional as well as the font fitting the shot well. We kept the same font and colour across all of our titles apart from the title which announced the name of our film which  we kept the same font however increased the size of.

To begin with we had to decide where we felt it would be best to place our film title. We could have chosen to put our film title right at the very start of our film however we decided that this didn't happen much in thrillers and instead this happened more in other genres, this was the point that we decided we didn't want the title right at the very start. The other option was to have the title after the first couple of minutes of the film starting, this was much more common in thrillers and this was what we decided we should do. We felt that this was a good idea as it drawn the audience into the film and got straight into it which would hopefully keep them interested.

The basic plot of our production is a teenager boy who gets lost on the way back home, he tries to take a short cut through a abandoned farm when he begins to hear noises and goes to see what it is making the noises. After a while he begins to leave the farm as he cannot find what is making the noise, he turns around to see a black figure standing behind him.

The elements that our seen in our opening sequence, we wanted to make our film opening as good as possible because the movie opening is what sets the scene for the audience for the rest of the film. As it is the first thing the audience will see we wanted to make our film opening as appealing as possible whilst keeping the audience engaged. We tried our best to keep the audience engaged by ending our film opening on a cliff hanger as we had seen this successfully done in other film openings. Another way we tried to keep the audience engaged and interested was by trying to give an eerie feeling through the location we used. We wanted to do this as this is typically done in thrillers as it is supposed to keep the audience on the edge of their seats. We also used the idea of a protagonist in our film opening, however we noticed in other thriller openings you rarely see the antagonist and for that reason we made it so you couldn't see our antagonists face in our opening. By doing this is made the audience wonder who it could be as the antagonists identity would remain hidden and therefore this  would keep the audience interested and would make them keep on guessing. This is typical of thrillers as they often use the hidden identity of the antagonist to create suspense.

We developed our story throughout our production, we knew from the start that we wanted to create a thriller/horror film and we wanted it to be eerie in a secluded setting. However despite this idea staying in our film opening many ideas changed during our planning process. For example at the start of our planning we had an idea of cross cutting between two scenes to make sure the audience would carry on watching our production as well as giving them information about the storyline. However we decided not to implement this idea as we felt as if it made our film opening to long as well as the fact that we felt that it broke our suspense and tension, two things that we wanted our film opening to create.

Our storyline is different to other narratives despite us trying to add conventions of real media products, we didn't want our narrative to be the same or similar to something that we had seen before. We began with the location and decided that an abandoned farm would fit nicely into our production. We knew one that was suitable and once we had been there to visit it we knew that it would be the perfect place for us to film our production. We thought it would be a good idea to film our production here as none of us had ever seen a thriller opening that is set in a muddy abandoned farm.

Another way that our production is different to other existing media products is because our main character doesn't fit into a specific social group. The clothes that he is wearing are neutral, a black zipped up jacket, denim jeans and nike shoes means that he doesn't look like a specific social group e.g chav,emo ect. Other films have their protagonist look like a specific social group in order to match their personality.

The Purge Anarchy

We feel as if The Purge Anarchy is very different in comparison to the opening of our film. At the beginning of The Purge we have a voice over and a long shot of a TV as the camera begins to zoom in. The voice over here helps explain what is happening in the shot, however compared to our film opening which is quite easy to understand that somebody is watching the protagonist.

Aftermath

We feel as if our production is much more similar to Aftermath, it begins with a  number of shots which include many close ups of the surround area which gives the audience a clear idea of the setting which they are in. We then are able to see the title sequence over the top of these shots, which is very similar in our production.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

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

                                            

I would prefer it if my production was to be distributed through independent cinemas across the UK, an example being above of the Phoenix in Leicester. I would prefer this as I think this way if we was going to distribute our production then we would have no way possibly competing with the majors such as 20th Century Fox and Warner Brothers who seem to dominate in cinemas. They would have a significant larger budget then what we would have in our production however even though other productions at the Phoenix would still have a much larger budget then us I feel that the difference in budget would be alot smaller. We would also be supporting the independent cinemas as well as these cinemas already having a audience that would be interested in films similar to mine, something that other cinemas that distribute the five majors might have less off. Films have also been very successful that have been shown in independent cinemas like this such as the Submarine.

On the left is our production logo, Warp Films and Studio Canal are the type of company that distribute lower-budget end productions such Submarine, they aim for a more niche audience an distribute micro budget productions that are made by UK independent companies.

How does our character use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

How did you attract your audience?

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

On the left is our protagonist Sam, and on the right is Oliver Tate from Submarine. The reason why i decided to chose these characters to compare is because they are both around the same age, this would therefore make it easier to see the differences. Despite them both being around the same age it is clear that they both look very different, Oliver from the Submarine is wearing a long black coat with a shirt and a tie, not many people would wear these clothes from his age group even though he is wearing his school uniform he is outside school in the screenshot, yet despite this he still maintains his smart look with his top button and tie done up. However Sam from our film is wearing more modern and up to date clothes. However they are also similar in their appearance in some ways such as them both having dark brown hair. They both share the same roles in their film as they are both teenage protagonists and despite our production just being a short film opening they both have alot of screen time.

What technology did we use throughout the making of our production?

Our group in the end decided that we should use final cut over IMovie because we thought that final cut is a little more advanced and would allow us to do more things which would therefore make our production look better. After a couple of hours we managed to get the hang of things. 

We used final cut for the following:

Add titles to our production

Add sound to our production

Making our production darker

Adding the separate clips together

Trim clips down 

This is the camera that we chose to film our production with. We had the option of using the school cameras as well however we discovered that this camera was slightly better then the cameras at school and gave higher quality videos and pictures which was most likely down to the wider lens. The camera had auto focus and zoom which made things much more easier as it was becoming dark.

We decided to use garage band in order to create the music for our production. We also added some sounds off of www.freesound.com. Once we had chosen all of the sounds which we wanted to use we then had to add them together and create what we thought would be a good soundtrack that would go with our genre and fit into our production. Sounds that we decided to add include, the sound of wind as well as footsteps and dark ambience. Once we had finished the soundtrack we then had to import it into final cut and then add it to our production where we then made any final adjustments that were necessary such as matching the sound to the film so that we could make it louder in places which would create tension.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you think you have learned in the progression from it to the full product.

                                         










Production Evaluation

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

Our product uses the typical conventions of existing horror media's, we used typical conventions such as something scary happening in a grave yard which is a very popular story line in horror films that already exist or even the opening suddenly ending without us knowing what has happened to the protagonist. We have crows in the background which are also often associated with death in existing media pieces this goes well with the eerie music which is often put at the start of horrors to build up tension. Another typical convention is for the antagonist to have there face covered which is in our production, in one case they have a hood up and in the other case they have face paint on to help keep their face hidden.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

I would say that our media product would represent teenagers as everybody in my production were all teenagers. One of our characters would represent being kind and caring as they are taking some flowers to a grave. However you cant really tell that the other characters are teenagers however you could say that these would represent evil and bad people as they are targeting what we see as being a nice innocent person. One of them is wearing a hoodie which could be stereotyped as being quite rough and maybe doesn't want there face to be shown due to there actions that they are about to perform.