Evaluation

Evaluation!

What media institution might distribute my media product?

There are many cinema institutions that may distribute my media product but Cinema City would be the most likely institution to distribute it because they have a versitile range of films shown in their cinema and each to please their viewers. They also show work created by students which would also apply to us and they try not to show just the new released or blockbuster films because they are an independant cinema and prefer low budget films or of films with a different language even.

Our film does have conventions of a hollywood type horror film which may jeopardise it being distributed in Cinema City, but this is an independant piece and horror should also be in their versitile range. If cinema city would not distribute it, it would be Vue (If it was a high budget film) because they show many horror films such as the will soon be showing a remake of the classic Nightmare on Elm Street for example. Our media product fits exactly into that catergory, it's intense and slightly a cheesy version of horror films. Vue also ranges in every classifiication.

How did we attract our audience?

Our target audience was 15+ and aimed at people who like to be frightened but also can stand to see gore. There is no point in having a product without it attracting the audience you aim for or no audience at all so we thought "What makes a horror film good?" Now obviously our piece was only an opening title sequence of a horror film but in those short minutes we had to give a sense of what would happen in the film. Horror films are generally about death so we thought we would do a supernatural horror to appeal to our audience.

What have I learnt about technologies?

Looking back on the preliminary task I feel I have learnt from many mistakes and have developed my knowledge of producing a media product. When filming the opening sequence film I felt more independent when filming, because when we were doing the preliminary task I didn't get to film a lot of it because I was the actress in it and I mainly only directed and edited but for our next project "The House" I filmed most of the scenes and used as many shots and angles as possible. When filming out preliminary task (on continuity) it was quite simple, even though I was acting in it I would still know how to film it because I have done BTEC media before. We knew how to use the tripod for the camera, we used the tripod because we needed it to be non-naturalistic. We wanted to use different shots such as paning and shot-reverse-shot and use low, mid and high angles. The preliminary task helped learn about experimenting with different angles.

In the main task we did the same as the preliminary task by using all the angles and shots, but this time we did not need to figure out how to edit. Before we struggled to realise how to edit the film because it was a new programme we have not used before. For the main task I learnt how to add music into the film.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our priliminary task we did represent certain social groups such as our character The Stalker which was played by Robbie Kuhn, he represented the average older teenaged criminal and villain and a "chav" social group. This was shown by having him wear a hoodie to hide his face and having an over the shoulder angle to not see his face.

My character represents the damsel in distress sterotype because she is running away from the stalker, they both also represent lower-class social groups because of the diagetic sound (the dialogue), the dialogue is simple sentences that is how it represents lower class.

Representation

In our "The House" film we tried to represent stereotypical ghost but also a stereotypical villain. We did this by using the colour red a lot in the film, this is a signifier for blood and the colour red was used in the first title of the film and fake blood used in the costume. Having a close up of Megan who plays the dead girl intimidates the audience and most films do use close-ups when there is a build up of fear.

We used slow, eerie music (that was non-copy right music) to represent the silence in a house that no one lives in but the occasional eerie sound signifies there is something for the audience to be scared of.

The mirror scene was an obvious representation of a ghost film because there is a shot-reverse-shot of one moment the mirror is clear and the next there

Choosing the best actress/ actor?

For our film called "The House" we have discussed who is right for the main character of the opening film. We discussed who would be comfortable acting infront of a camera and who could easily portray the character. We have chosen Megan Forster to play the main character (The Ghost) and even though she has no real acting experience we thought we would take the risk and trial run how she is on camera before a few minutes of filming. Usually the casting director would choose a actress with a lot of experience and certainly if the film is a high-budget film, they would choose a well-known award winning actress in the real media world. Megan's acting skills did succeed even though there was a short amount of time to film in and she easily portrayed the character with help of costume and make-up and directing (I gave her directions on how to move and where to move from and to).

The Costume

• The costume, for our horror film for the main task, is simple clothing but mainly make-up :D

• Megan who plays “The dead girl” wore…

A simple black dress with lace around the collar

Ripped black tights

Her hair will be down and rough looking, this will mainly be done by hair curlers and back-combing the hair

She will wear pale face make-up and eye shadow as bruises etc

Forms and conventions

In our media product we do use conventions of a real film such as in a real film their titles establish people's job titles in the film such as director etc.

We use non-digetic sound in the opening of the film like most opening titles, the sound is used to create a certain mood or atmosphere.

For the two-minute opening of a film our final version was to have a horror and for the location to be filmed at my house.

The story line was to have a ghost haunt a house and for the footage to be clips of what would happen in the film.

The equipment we used for this task was just a simple cam-corder/ camera and so it was easy to manage but we could of improved the footage by using a tripod.

We tried to include many shots, we included high, meduim and low shot and also a over the shoulder shot. We used close-ups and paning as well and shot reverse shot. For example when I filmed the high shot my aim was for the focus to be on the hands of the ghost (the actress) and to seem scary to audience and then I decided to slowly move the camera to focus on the face and body of the character with a medium shot, as the footage was meant to focus on the dynamics of the body and the make-up.

The costume, props and makeup turned out to work very well but it was time consuming and took about an hour to create the look of the character. I decided to give the character bruises, cuts and dark eyes to represent a dead person. In one clip I put a lot of make-up all over her arms to appear as blood and even though we did not have the most suitable make-up to use I managed to use what we had and improvise by using kitchen ingredients. I decided to have the actress wear a black dress because we did not want bright colours as it would set the wrong mood and gave her black riped tights to create the effect. We did not use props because it was unnessary because we used the background/ scene as it had plenty of detail anyway.

Health and safety is important when filming because when filming the film group is liable for any health and safety problems with the actors/ actresses or even themselves. We checked health and safety problems, for example before putting make-up on the actress I asked if she was allergic to any ingredients or products.

Our aim from the audience was to make them antispate what will happen in the film and the make the audience feel uncomfortable, nervous and scared. Hopefully we achieved at least one of these aims.

Managing human resources was simple, I asked a friend outside my media class to act in the film and because our film was edited ,and we were using music and sound effects throughout the two minute footage, I decided to give her directions while filming on how to move and she followed the directions easily.

Overall the main task finished perfectly except we should of discussed problems that could happen before filming because our original version/ idea did not work. Also re-filming a film is very time consuming and in the real film industry is costs a lot of money to film one film, let alone changing it. That is something we could improve on.

The audience aimed at for our film “The House” is aimed at teenagers/ adults (15s and over) because of the genre and it is aimed at people who are horror fans of films like The Ring and supernatural films. Children would not be in the target audience (TA) because the horror genre may be too intense for them and their guardians may not want their children to watch it.

We attracted our audience by having a realistic shot of the house, we created this by using a jolting camera movement and the red title “The House” should automatically attract the audience because of the colour. Red immediatly implies it is a horror film because the colour red represents blood. The music we used in the opening titles was from the film The Ring and should create and eerie feeling for the audience because its an anticipating eerie sound and when our actress appears we wanted them to be intrigued about the film but also nervous. We created this by having different shots and moving from one shot to another because we wanted them to know it was a horror and give some detail of the film but we didn’t want to reveal too much.

The media institution that would distribute our media product would be Pinewood Studios because they have produced films of the same genre because they have a variety of films. They have produced the famous horror The Shining and most recently The Wolfman (even though it does not seem like a horror it is classed as a horror) and they have done sci-fi horrors such as Aliens. This media institution might distritbute our product because it is a British Film and Pinewood Studios is a British Film Institution. What makes this film a British Film is that it was filmed in Britain and the actress in the film was from the UK.

Criticisms

Our film could used more planning, changing the film could of jeopardised our chances of finishing the project on time. Luckily it did not.

It may of been best to have the different scenes to link to one another.

We could of used more original themes because most of these themes in the scenes have been used.