Evaluation

Our film is set in a wood, this is typical of a thriller genre.

Our first few images are extreme close ups of our main characters

face. We never show her whole face, this instantly adds mystery to

the film; a typical convention of a thriller.

We also establish time and place and clearly show the story and relationship link between the two sets of characters in our parallel editing sequence.

We used these copyright free images, to create credits at the start of our film, these typically would be used to show the companies and distributors involved with the making of the film.

I feel we established our genre and time and place clearly, especially by including a chase sequence and then the end sequence which used an element of enigma. Our sequence leaves the audience questioning the storyline which is a typical element of many thriller films.

We challenge conventions in our title sequence , we did not use titles right from the begining of our sequence which is typical of thriller genres. We thought our title sequence would be more effective if we did this and enduced the audience into our story and chase sequence.

2. How does your media product represent particular social group?

We have used a close mother and daughter relationship set up as well as an obvious close family set up. This is demonstrated by the mother and daughter snuggled on the sofa and the fact the mother is concerned where her other daughter is. This loving family set up represents females in a loving, feminine way; a residual idea. This is typical of most films, particularly in thrillers; as a close family relationship helps bring emotion to the film, if something disastrous happens to destroy or break up that relationship the audience can empathise with the characters. This is typically used in a lot of genres.

In our sequence three female characters are used heavily and get the literally all of the screen time. The first character we hear is our main female character; our other two female characters are introduced shortly after. It is only at the end we actually see the threatening male. Therefore this suggests a emergent idea that It is evident that our main character is being chased, at the end of the chase sequence when our main character falls; it is obvious that the person chasing is a male. We can tell this by his tatty biker boots. He also stands over the girl on the floor at the end, over powering her.This suggests that males will dominate our film.This is an example of residual ideology.

The mis-en-scene, particularly the costume of the young girl; her flowerly dress, makes the audience percieve our main character and innocent. The fact that she as wrapped in with a coat and a wolly scarf adds to this, also her long wavy hair blowing in the wind adds a clique 'girly' look.

The fact two fo our female characters are 'snuggled' on the sofa also adds a femanine element, they also joke about with the biscuit tin, showing laughter and affection typical of a residule view of a mother and daugher.

In the living room scene we have patches of no dialogue from the characters, instead we hear the non- diegeitc sound from the T.V playing in the background. The film we played in the background was 'The Mummy Returns' and alot of the sound and music used in that film is quite sinister. This then could suggest, indirectly to the characters that there loved one that is not home, is in danger. This would then be a example of the residual idea of the loving female family set up.

The non- digetic sound in the wood creates an tense atmopshere, it could suggest shes in trouble; hence showing a residule idea that females are always the victim. The digetic music in the chase sequence,represnts the man chasing her and the girls fear; this enhances that residule idea. It's obvious to the audience that she is in danger hence making the audience sense tension, danger and mystery.

When our titles appear in the final sequence, our main character/actor is mentioned first. This is an example of emergent ideology. Also the last sequences changes back to our main character, and there is no sign of the male character, however our character looks suspcious, this could contrast with the rest of our sequence because of the fact so much of it contains residule ideology.

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

If we were to distribute our film we would probably be looking for an independant company like 'Pathe'.. Our target audience are mainly mainstreamers however it does have an appeal to individualists because of it's dark grimey feel of mystery. Because it's a relatviely small film we would advertise mainly on the internet, newspapers/magazines; however we would mainly rely on word of mouth to make it a success, as we would not have the money to spend on big advertising campaigns.

'Pathe' are relatively small company so originally we would be looking print about 50 copies of our film. We would distribute them in well known cinemas aswel as other small screenings; this would reflect our target audience of some mainstream and some individualists.

A film that has used the same strategy as we intend to use would be the film 'The Descent'. This film was produced and distributed by 'Pathe'. It was thought that this film would be relatively small and was not expected to make a large amount of money, however in it's first opening weekend it made $8,911,330 in the USA in 2,095 screens. Because of it's success;the film then linked up with other distributors globally to sell it worldwide. For example 'A- Film Distribution' in the Netherlands and 'Alfia Films' in Argentina.

Pathe has links with and does deals with companies like Fox Searchlight; which is a much bigger distribution company. Fox Searchlight is owned by 'News Corp.' who are a that owns media companies in film, TV, Publishing and online media. This means that if our film was to take off and suceed globally we would have the money and oppitunity to cross-over,do a deal with Fox searchlight and use the power of synygy to advertise our film. We could advertise using trailers, set up a online website, produce interviews in magazines and potentially fly our stars over to places to take part in big premiers and conferences.

4. Who woud be the audience for your media product?

Our media film would appeal to a target audience of 16-24 year olds, in the pyschographic group of mainstreamers. However, it may appeal to a more individualistic audience. On the socio-economic scale our audience will be of B, C1 and C2, and will be mixed gender.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

To make sure our film appealed to our target audience; it was essential that throughout our project we asked them for feedback. This is was also as important when it came to the final drafting of our product. We set up a focus group, in which the members reflected our target audience.

Some of these responses were taken after first drafts of our sequence. Therefore our final draft should reflect some of the changes we made. in response to this. For example 'I think that the heavy breathing should carry on into the next shot to create more of an affect of tension' We took on this advice and thought it did create more of the dramatic effect we were looking for. It was important we did change our sequence to what they suggest as it made it more appealing for our target audience.

After anaylsing our feedback I feel we were successful in attracting our target audience.Firstly, they all enjoyed watching it. They all seemed to find that it had a very dramatic effect with the use of tension; which kept them engrossed in the sequence. They commented on the use of the digetic sound for the breathing, saying by only using this sound created a more eerie effect at the start of the sequence. They also recognised it as a thriller from the use of a chase sequence; and the fact it used a enigma at the end, they commented it added a typical mysterious element to the film. They elaborated and commented that this made it a mildly challenging film and would be suitable our original psychographic audince grouping of B, C1 and C2. They also thought the fact we used parallel editing was effective. We tried to set up two storylines interlinked and both contrasting, our audience found this worked and creative a sense of excitement as well as clearly distinguishing a family link between the two scenes. Furthermore they commented that the use of fast paced editing in the chase sequence also added to the tension.

They commented on the use of mise-en-scene and said it was effective in helping create two different atmospheres. They told us that the choice of clothing was appropiate to the individual characters. For example the main character was wearing a dress while the dominating male wore large biker boots. To have a theatening character is typical of a thriller film and our focus group commented that we used that effectively.

They noticed our variety of shots, including the close ups of our female character and our hand held shots, making it more interesting to watch. They felt that these were used appropriately in establishing the main female character, so that in the end sequence it is clear that it is the same girl running in the woods. They commented on the use of handheld running/chase shots, used in a fast paced sequence which then made it more scary, and thrilling to watch.

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

During the process of constructing our media product we used a range of different technologies. Some of these we had used in our preliminary task and so were familar with them. However this task was much bigger and therefore using the different technologies we found challenging.

We used various internet sites including 'Youtube' when we were researching. We were looking into specific features of title sequences and we did a detailed analysis of the opening of 'Juno' and 'Dexter'. We were able to screenshot parts of the sequence to put on to our blog, to help show clarity in our work. We also used google to find images for our genre moodboard and our audience moodboard, we researched 'thriller' and things associated with that to get ideas for our genre moodboard. We then used 'Facebook' to set up a focus group and took photos from facebook to put on our blog, showing who was in it. 'Facebook' also played a big part in getting audience feeback.

Using a blog to put all our work on, made us very organised; especially when we had a large amount of blog posts. It automatically grouped our posted into months so it was easy for us to find the information we wanted. Blogger helped us present our work in a clear way. We could save drafts of blogs if she had not quite finished. We could also put links and photos on our blog which helped us to present post-production pictures, our animatic, screenshots and our final media product.

We used Adobe 'Premier Pro' and 'On Location' to transfer our film onto the computer and to edit our footage to create our final product. We used 'On Location' to transfer the shots we wanted to use onto the computer. We did this with a capture camera. It was also useful because it automatically split the shots and numbered them for us. We simply clicked record when the shot started and then again when it finished, we then repeated this for every desired shot.

We used 'New' technologies to film and edit our final product. We filmed our final sequence with a 'SonyDV' camera, and a tripod. At first we fiddled with the controls to get used to them. We practiced moving the camera on the tripod so we could get smooth tracking shots. We practiced attaching and detaching the camera from the tripod before filming. It was useful in capturing our desired shots. We didn't have any problems with the camera once we knew how to work it properly.

We were lucky that we didnt have any corrupt shots, we tried to reduce the risk of this by leaving a five second gap at the start and end of our shots. We also recorded a unwanted shot at the start of filming and one at the end when we had done all our filming.

We used 'Premier Pro' to edit our film and put the finished product together. We inserted all the clips we had transfered.We then put them into the timeline and edited them chronologically.

We were able to use a range of effects in this programe. One of these was lowered the brightness of shots. We did this on all shots that we taken outside in the woods; this was because we felt the shots were too light and made our character seem to innocent. Also, our other scene was filmed on a different day and it was darker on the outisde shot. We needed it to seem as if the two scenes were happening simultaneously, so thats another reason why we darkened the shot.

We also added music onto our timeline,this was copyright free. We cut the climax of the music to fit with certain parts of our sequence to create more tension. We then unlinked parts of the sound and copied them into different places. We then also deleted some sound to create more of a dramatic effect with just the music.

The titles were relatively easy to figure out how to do, we faded them, in and out as well as the main title 'SKULK' we then exported the file as FVL and uploaded it onto 'YouTube' We found the program quite easy to use once we got used to it. However we did waste maybe twenty mintues of most lessons because when we opened the programme, it crashed and froze.

Using 'Prezi' for my evaluation has been much more interesting than just writing it on my blog. I found the software easy to use and it creates more of a visual presentation and i think it looks nicer. I have gained skills in using new technologies that will be very useful in further projects.

We put our film onto our blogs by putting the embedded code intota blog post on blogger. We did this with drafts and our animatic, it was a easy process.

Evaluation

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