Evaluation - Sadie Wilson

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

In order to use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products. We had to establish a narrative for our production; this was creating a plot for our production and establishing whether the media product would be linear on non- linear. After mind mapping and discussing a range of possible films, we came to the conclusion that for our 2 minute production, we would create a horror/thriller type of film.  In which a series of shots would be shown in a chronological manor.

As part of the planning for our production, we researched into the type of genre our film would be and researched similar films that coincided with our idea. This idea was based around the concept of two young girls being kidnapped, by an unknown masked figure, and tortured to death. We believed that a good twist in the film would also to have one of the girls be a sacrifice and risk their life to save the other, in attempt to stop the masked man’s torturing. After researching into real media productions similar to our idea, the key theme that was stressed throughout was that the characters in these types of films, often involved innocent victims, psychotic individuals and characters with dark pasts. Similar to this, films in the thriller/suspense category all have a high level of anticipation, expectation and uncertainty. Therefore when we created our production we chose to have the main dominant character the ‘Masked Man’ as an individual with a dark past that as a result leads him to commit such acts of terror on the two innocent victims. Camera angles, shot movement and positioning of the camera were also a key aspect of our production that used forms and conventions of real media products, for instance many thriller type of films have close ups of the characters to stress suspense and fear.

Close up used in the film Sweeney Todd, the character has a sense of fear in her facial expressions .

Medium Close up used in our production, to stress fear. 

Low angle shots are used to show the dominant character in control and to stress that he is the character with the power.

Low angle shot used in the film Friday the 13th, this shot expresses the character's dominance

Low angle shot used in our production, similar to Friday the 13th, this shot expresses the characters power.

Cross cutting is the most common type of edit used in thriller productions this jumps from one location to the next, due to multiple things happening at the same time therefore cutting between each, fills the audience in on what is happening, while something is taking place. We used this in our production to go from a shot of the masked man entering the cellar and heading towards his weapon ( the blooded knife), to shots of the two girl characters tied up in fear, scared of what is going to come as a result of the masked man’s actions.

Close up of the knife.

Shot then cuts to a Medium shot of the two girls in fear.

Sound is also a way in which we used media products already distributed to relate it to our production,  for instance, many thriller films use non-diegetic sound such as music playing in background to add to suspense, therefore as a result to relate to real media products, we used non-diegetic sound throughout our film to give the film more tension and to build the level of anticipation, but also diegetic sound of the two girls in fear also added to the level of tension.Mise-en-scene is essentially the main feature of our film that relates our production to its genre. The location of our film, for example stresses that it’s hidden away, as cellar’s are often gloomy, dark and mysterious which is similar to that of thriller films.

Example of a thriller location used in real media products, from the film Hostel.

Another example of thriller locations, from the film Hostel.

Our location, after researching into thriller locations, and using the forms and conventions of real media products.

Another example of the type of location we have used. 

Props in addition express the genre of a type of film and relate our production to real media products, for example, props are used in our production to illustrate the masked mans power and to stress that the knife is used to inflict pain and suffering, which is a key in aspect in thriller films. Blood is used in our production as this shows that the film is going to be gory and also creates a feeling of apprehension as it suggests that something bad has already happened. 

Prop of a blooded knife used in real media products, in the thriller/horror film, Scream.

Props used in our production.

Blooded knife being used by main character, relating our production to real media products.

Dimmed lighting is also used in all of our shots, this gives an eerie edge to our production and when creating and editing our production, we used the font ‘cracked’ on the titles as this looked creepy and the colour red symbolized danger and spilled blood.

An example of the real media products we researched.

Our production titles that we created after researching into real thriller/horror  media  products.

As a result of researching into the thriller genre and researching similar films, we understood what our film needed to look like in order to meet the criteria of a thriller/ horror film and to use and develop real media products that were already produced, into our own production.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our production mainly represents the dominant male stereotype and uses certain camera angles, Mise-en scene, sound and lighting to represent the typical male stereotype, as a strong dominant figure and the two female characters being weak and of less of status than him. Low angle shot represents this masked mans status as he is shown as the strongest figure and in control of how much pain the girls endure. Close up on the two female characters faces expresses the fear they feel due to this character action’s, which again reassures the audience that this particular figure is in control.  In addition, Diegetic sound of the girl’s scared and worrying speech to one another also expresses the power the male character has over the two girls as they can’t do anything to stop him and as consequence are seen as torture objects rather than young innocent girls. Lighting also expresses this dark character’s past and in many of the shots the masked man’s face is hidden by a shadow which expresses that he is hiding something and is keeping aspects of his character ‘in the dark’. However as the film progresses the women are seen as the stronger characters due to the courageous act of one of them sacrificing their life to save the other. This challenges the typical stereotype of women as women are usually seen as the weaker characters.  

This particular, low angle shot is an example of how camera angles represent the masked man's dominance and how lighting is used to keep the masked man ''hidden in the dark''.

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

After researching similar films, with the same genre and audience of our production, we came to the conclusion that the three main distributors of our media product were 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures and Columbia Pictures. 

These particular big American studios have been involved in the process of producing and distributing large thriller/horror box office films, such as films that are similar to ours, which have the main storyline of kidnapping, suspense and torture, these films include Taken (2008) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCbDUREBwUg distributed by 20th Century Fox.The Last House On The Left (2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl2lmFPBGN8 and The Bone Collector (1999) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-3Sy39e7ko&feature=fvst were both distributed by Universal Pictures and additionally Columbia Pictures was also part of the distribution for The Bone Collector.  

As a result, due to our production company wanting to create a well known thriller/horror film, we believe that a big budget Hollywood production/distribution company would be more suited to the type of film we have created, rather than the smaller independent companies such as Warp Films. The reasons behind why these particular companies might distribute our product include, the context of our production is similar to those already produced by these companies and it has a storyline that necessarily hasn’t been produced before but still meets that genre of thriller/horror, that audience’s would be intrigued to watch. In many ways these production companies would have produced the film differently as many of these big budget companies would have put more money into the production, therefore the outcome of the film, such as effects and editing would look more expensive and more horrific.  

Who would be the audience for your media product?

After researching into the certificate of our film, producing and distributing a questionnaire on social network sites, such as Facebook and Twitter and reviewing the results of the questionnaire. We came to the conclusion that the target audience for our production is that of mixed gender and between the ages of 18 - 25, with the age of the audience depending on the audience's interest in such horror films. The results from our questionnaire suggested that younger people were more interested in horror films than the older generations. In addition to this, the people that would consider watching our film were interested in mainly action, horror and mystery films. However taking into consideration that mainly younger people would prefer to watch out film, there is still the possibility of older people who are interested in the horror and thriller genre to be interested in our production as it meets this criteria. Similar to this, the audience for our media product are mainly those who consume media through the box office or their own home cinema system, this is a good way of getting a popular revenue as it shows that our production would make money in cinema’s rather than lose money due to illegal downloads.  Below is an example of some of the feedback we received and how we redeveloped our idea, to meet the target audience’s suggestions, by changing the filming of our production, from being filmed by a hand held camera, to that of the camera following both the masked mans and two innocent girl’s actions. 

How did you attract/address your audience?

By producing a questionnnaire and distributing it amongst many of the possible audience’s for our film, we recieved a range of audience feedback that suggested ways in which our media product could be alterered and adapted, to attracting and addressing our target audience. As a result, by taking on board the audience feedback and modifying our production I belive that we reached our target audience . For instance, we knew that our production was that of a horror/thriller film. Therefore had to appeal to those who were intrested in these sort of films and who may be intrested in similar genre’s to ours. When planning our production, we began by appealing to our audience by portraying the film as realistic, which the audience could then think ‘what if’ this actually happened and therefore being lured into a false sense of security, imaging the film asif if was real, which as a result would make the production more horrific, when the torturing took place and create more suspense as they would belive the two girls were actually being tortured.

From the audience feedback we recieved, we learned that our production had been succesful appealed to audience’s as its was different from films already produced and the twist was something you wouldnt normally see in these productions, for example one of the comments left on our feedback sheet said ‘This is awesome and consists of an intresting storyline that you wouldn’t normally see in films’, ‘the dark background and grundging looking cellar sets the scene really well for a horror film’. These comments reasured us that infact we had been succesful in attracting and adressing out target audience, as they found the production a sucess.
In addition to this, other aspects of our production that have been succesful are the technical aspects, as we had only ever used the equipment once before and despite this being challenging and the technical side to the production proving difficult, we managed to create gory titles, a continuous set of shots with a range of camera angles and use the equipment and new technology to our advantage, with the end result being a succesful two minute production that we are proud of. Despite these success, there are certain aspects of our production that were less succesful for example from the feedback we recieved some of the audiences said ‘I knew what was going to happen before it did’ this suggested to us that in order to improve our production, we would have to consider an even more unexpected twist. 

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

We have learnt many things about technology from the process of constructing this product. A range of decisions concerning technology had to be made during pre production, production and post production. First of all the technology used at pre production included the internet,  to research and develop our idea, this was a major pre production decision as it formed a basis for much of our planning from the idea’s we found on the internet. Secondly the key decisions made during the production stage, included technology such as lighting and camera’s, this was used to gain the best camera angles and shots for the type of film we wanted to create. Finally the key decisions made about technology during post-production, included editing equipment on the mac computers, this was used to gain the best possible outcome and effects for our production.

Throughout each stage of the production process we used a range of technologies, to develop our media product. During post-production, we used mainly internet based technologies to construct our product, for example we used Google Blogger to  publish all of our pre production posts, we used Google Documents to create questionnaires that were distributed among social network sites, we used Google to research into genre, props, settings and characters of thriller films and therefore could relate the information back to our production.

We used Internet Movie Database to research similar films and similar plots to that of our production, along with YouTube to watch the trailers of these films. 

An example of the research into similar films we conducted using internet movie database.

In addition we also used Google to research into horror film logos, from researching this and finding similarities of blood and gore used throughout, we used Photoscape to create our own production logo for Mesa Productions, this was an extremely useful piece of technology as it allowed us to create a logo that looked professional but still reflect the theme of horror/thriller.

Our production logo we created using Photoscape.

We also used Celtx to create the script for our production as this created a script that resembled one of which produced by the real production and distribution companies. 

Our script we created using Celtx. 

We used Art of the Title to research into similar title sequences and this gave us a good undertanding on what we wanted our titles to look like and what we wanted them to consist of. 

Sweeney Todd titles we researched.

The technology used during production, was less than that used in pre production, for instance the only technology we used when filimg our production was using the camera and tripod, therefore this was the most succesful task, as it wasnt as time consuming as pre production or post production and the main feature of procution was filming specific shots. 

During post- production we used a range of technologies to edit our film and add effects, for instance we used Final Cut Express to edit the production by adding titles, music, filters, effects and cutting pieces of shots together.

This is a shot final cut and shows the range of sound, edits and camera shots we used in our production and how we edited our production together.

I have learnt a range of technical aspects, when creating our production, this included learning how to blog and how to create a questionnaire. Additionally I have also developed my filming skills along with how to effectively edit on Final Cut express by following a range of steps; - capture and log footage, - name shots, - rough edit/cut, - fine tune, - add effects and filters, - fine tune and improve sound, - add music and titles. Consequently by following these steps, we have modified our production to gain a better/ higher quality film. 

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

Comparing the two briefs of these tasks together, shows how much we heve learnt, for instance the preliminary exercise was a continuity task involving filimg and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down on a chair opposite another character, with whom he/she then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue, this task had demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule. Whereas this main task was the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes. This shows how due to us improving in our technical skills, this main task was considerably more tricky and harder than that of the first. The preliminary exercise was given specific requirements that we had to achieve in order to pass, in contrast the main task leaves the knowledge and understanding of what is required down to us and as a consequnce leaves us to develop our skills more individually. Overall taking into consideration improvements such as timing of our film, I believe that I have improved greatly since the preliminary exercise, I am more confident with the filming equipment such as the camera, tripod and lights, and in addition we have produced an effective match on action, shown a range of shots and followed the 180 degree rule on our own accord. If i was to improve this project I would take into consideration everything I have learned regarding technology and if possible make the opening sequence longer, with more detail, include more camera shots of the character that are to a high standard rather than playing around/ editing many of the shots in and in addition would make the final product longer by either additional shots or more dialogue.

Below is a link and an embedded video of our full media product:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eieUaAO9UGw