Evaluation

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

Our film Hope is a psychological thriller and can be compared to other thrillers such as lovely bones which had a great influence upon the way we wanted to narrate the story. In the beginning of ‘the lovely bones’ the main event of her death happens before her story is told. Similarly in the opening of our film we have the main events of victim’s death being shown with later a narration from a victim to tell the stories. Also in our opening the identity of the killer is kept to a minimum giving him a weary characteristic, in a similar way to the lovely bones as they blur and darken his image to keep his identity hidden from the audience.

The pictures show how our film and ‘the lovely bones’ in hiding identity of the killer.

(This trailer demonstartes the narration that we chose to use)

The opening shows the production logo first and the titles are shown after the killer has been introduced and his victims to capture the audience in the genre and symbolise the meaning of the title. The opening shows the genre through darkness when the killer is shown and the victims being in a weary environment.

Camera angles, shot movement and position were used to create effects of the genre.

This shot of the view of feet was used to enhance the thriller genre showing the killer to be walking in a dark area such as a wood but keeping his identity secret.

This shot again keeps the killers identity hidden and the use of him putting leather gloves on symbolises he is doing something wrong.

This is a point of view shot shown from the killer perspective, showing his mental problems collecting pictures of future victims.

These three screen shots show and establishing shot showing the environment in which one of the victims has been murdered.

The title which we chose to use symbolises the main victim which the film is about, and her innocence within the situation.

We chose to use a white text to show the purity of the main victim who narrates the story, with non-diegetic sound played over the top of the sequence.

2 How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our film we represented women as ‘victims’ as they seem to be stalked by a strong male, using the stereotypical view that women are innocent and that men have a more dominant force.

For one of the victims we used the camera angle and shot movement to show her position in society. In this scene the camera tilts down from a bridge to look on to the girl lying on the floor, showing that she is submissive to the power the male killer holds and helpless to this power he possesses. 

When editing this same character we were also able to incorporate her innocence, venerability and the purity of her personality, by fading the image of her body on the floor into a river flowing down to a bunch of flowers.

However, we also decided to challenge the normal stereotypical view of females with a strong outgoing confident girl which stands out. For this girl we decided to use mise-en-scene to illustrate he stand out personality using elaborate clothing patterns and colours, plus the use of makeup to make her into a girl which her friend aspires to be.

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

A distributor which I think would distribute our film would be momentum pictures. Although this film company tend to deal with films of a larger budget I feel that they would hold and interest with our psychological thriller as they have distributed this genre before including this years ‘woman in black’, ‘Possession’, ‘Vanishing’ etc. Looking at their website they seem to distribute a variety of genre, but mainly focus on the thriller/horror genres.

http://www.momentumpictures.co.uk/

4 Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience we targeted for the film ‘Hope’ are both male and females above the age of 15 up to 30+ with an interest in psychological thrillers, mainly people that are ‘into’ films and watch a great deal of different genres, we found that the majority of people that liked our film idea were also into horror. Plus all of the people we questioned said that they you watch our film. To find out about our audience and their opinions we used Facebook to send out questionnaires about our film and about themselves.

Responses about the story line were all very reassuring with people giving comments such as “griping”, “interesting”, “unusual” etc. meaning that there was little change made to the plot itself.

From the replies that we received some of the people rated our film as an 18 whereas others said that a 15 certificate would be suitable as there is no real violence or ‘gore’.

We awarded our film a 15 certificate as is fitted into the specification given by the bbfc; http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/15-2/. In that the film contains strong violence and dangerous behaviour but the violence within the film is not excessive and does not dwell on the infliction of pain. Plus the film contains aspects of horror but it is not explicit so that the film fits the 15 certificate.

 

5 How did you attract/address your audience?

We were able to attract our target audience by using the method of attracting victims in the film through the internet addressing a current daily activity that our audience face with social networking sites. Through using something that people can relate to I feel that we have captured our target audience.

When planning our production we decided to include the stereotypical view of a dominant male being the killer and every day young women being the target , we also added the idea that the females would be ‘crossed’ off using their profile pictures, again using something the target audience can relate to. To add affect the filming and effects done on final cut were used to make the scenes dark to catch the audience in the thriller genre. It is shown in the audience feedback that what we used was successful in that the film got the reactions we were aiming for.

All of these feed back responses gave the reaction that we expected the film opening to get showing that the production stages were a success.

The main positive response that the film got was that the soundtrack that we added to it gave the ‘scary’ affect that we aimed it to do.

However some of the responses that we recived highlighted areas in which we could improve.

This comment although complimenting the sound track and the consistent story line shows how some of the editing didn’t work aswell as what we would have liked it to, with the colour correction some of the scenes were filmed in dark areas with not much light so the colour correction tool on the final cut programme could not work as sucessfully. From this the work would be improved in the future by filming the scenes in well light areas and then use the colour correction tool to make it darker therefore keeping the ‘key’ actions clear and visable.

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

During the preproduction stages we used Google and Youtube to help us to research ideas for our opening sequence, find storyline ideas and to similar storylines in action. The group also used Facebook to question people asking their opinions on our film; whether they liked the story line, agreed with the certificate we gave it, what genre they liked etc.

We also used Celtx during preproduction to produce the script for our opening sequence to help it to look professional and allow us and others to be able to view it clearly and understand the actions.

During production we used Final cut express to put our film opening sequence together and add effects. Whilst using Final cut we encountered some problems when the programme wouldn’t allow us to do what we wanted, this may be down to little experience with the new programme we have. Some of the issues were that with some of the frames when next to each other they looked different colours but when we went to use colour correction it would work on some frames and others it would alter the colours completely sometimes to black. We also encountered a problem when trying to put our logo onto the sequence as it was too small, but we were then shown how to stretch the logo and altar the frame length so that we could fit an effect to make it blend into the next frame.

Throughout the whole process we used blogger to post everything we had done from pre to post production; this allowed us to see what we had done well, what to improve upon and what we needed to do.

Overall I have learnt how to use Celtx, edit and connect frames on Final cut express and that social networking is a quick successful way to get feedback and promote. 

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

During the preliminary task we were asked to film and edit a character opening a door crossing the room and sitting down across from another character after which they exchange a couple of lines of dialogue . In this main task we had to film the titles and opening of a new fiction film lasting for 2 minutes, we were able to use methods from the preliminary task to help film and compile the opening sequence. Some off the things we used were match on action we used this when the male walks up to the wall with the picture and sticks it on the wall, we also used match on action when opening/going to open the door similarly to the preliminary task. We also tried filming shot reverse shot when the two girls are talking but we found that in doing so we broke the 180 degree rule and so changed it to one shot from one of the girls side showing the conversation and so sticking to the 180 degree rule.

(Male walking up to the wall, at the wall and sticking the photo onto the wall.)

I have found that I have improved in editing, I can put frames together and make smooth transitions from frame to frame using effects on final cut such as ‘cross dissolve’ etc. I have also improved in this area by being able to use colour correction on frames making them follow on from each other, plus I am now able to add music to the sequence, titles and other recorded sounds including dialogue.

Upon completing the two minute film opening and comparing it with our first preliminary task it is evident that we have been able to use different methods especially when it came to editing adding effects for frame transitions correcting colour and sound.