Evaluation of the product

Evaluation of the media product

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

We decided to create an opening sequence for a thriller/horror film. When researching our genre, we captured various ideas and developed some of these further into our film. One convention of our film that we developed from other media is the location (as seen in the picture on the right). In our research, the film ‘The Amityville Horror’ is set in the night whilst the family were sleeping. The main character is introduced alone due to it being set at night; we feel the loneliness is an effective convention to use in media products associated with this genre, and this is where we used the location to adapt this effect. We feel that by using the forest, in a typical horror product, the lonely atmosphere from the desolate forest would add the eerie effect that we feel is needed for our media product. The convention of building suspense has also been used and can be seen in our first few shots of the characters’ running, but without giving any idea of what they are running from or why, however clearly showing that they are afraid. By revealing the characters’ gradually with each shot, we feel the thriller/horror convention is achieved by showing the panic from running, and with each shot showing a little more of why the characters are running and what could be happening to them. In 'The Strangers' (one of our researched films) there are fade-in/fade-out shots of the different houses at the beginning - which gradually, with each shot, builds the suspense and the shots reveal more to the audience. In our film, we have developed this convention of building suspense by fading-in and fading-out the shots of the boys running in the opening shots. Furthermore, the convention of including text into the shots that reveals information to the audience other than through dialogue and shots, has been used in our film. After the shot of the tape recorder, we include a blackout which supplies the information: “Two boys found dead in March woods”, “Police have detained their first suspect”. In our research ‘The Strangers’, the film includes these frames at the start too. As you can see from my research, they use the black screen with orange writing, telling the audience some minimal but relevant information. We have used this convention, however, changed it to have the dialogue of the interviewer speaking in the present interview scene, and having white text over a black background presenting minimal information about what is happening. Despite our research having this convention of plain text, we feel that looking back at this convention, that it could have been more effective with a newspaper clipping, etc. instead of the plain text. Another convention that we used was the narration from the interview scene. This convention is used in our research from ‘The Strangers’, where the frames with the text at the start of the film present the audience with the background information. Also in my other researched film 'The Amityville Horror', they include narration from an emergency call between someone that has found the family dead and the emergency services. This narration gives the audience a substantial insight into what has happened and what has been done about this incident (the shooting of the family). We use the (dialogue) narration as the present tense, which presents the interview scene but has minimal shots of the scene too create a kind of dual aspect (flashback) opening, which has the forest scene as the past tense - thus giving the audience the view of the flashback with the sound of the present interview. 

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

Our product represents the teenage boys as afraid and panicking, therefore challenging the stereotypical representation that media can socially present teenage boys as confident and even threatening. The boys are shown to be running away from something that intimidates them – this challenges the stereotype of this social group because it would be the boys that are typically fight the antagonist, and more for the ‘damsel in distress’ to be the one running away (typically the female gender, commonly in horror/thriller media). Another social group that is represented in our film is the stereotypical police officer. John Hinch of who is playing the role of police interviewer is featured only a couple of times in the shots yet has running dialogue from the interview scene, which is played over the forest scene which links the two scenes together but still doesn't explain why, thus increasing the suspense. This character in particular represents the positive stereotype of a police officer due to the look and the voice he presents. The mise-en-scene of having a suit, wrinkles, a bald head and being a middle aged man, plus the soundtrack of having a low/deep voice all does add to the stereotype of the role of a police officer. Also, the fact there is a dog mentioned for the killing in the narration could resemble the stereotypical features that a dog can have. Whenever a dog in a horror film is present, they can be seen to be violent and attack the victim. We have represented the dog (which is not seen, adding uncertainty to the actual murder) as a violent, positive stereotype. 

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

‘Platinum Dunes’ is one prime example of a horror media institution that could possibly distribute our media product. This is because Platinum Dunes have already produced such films as ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ and ‘Amityville Horror’ which are famously well-known examples of this genre. The ‘Amityville Horror’ is one of the films that I have researched into, which does seem fairly close in comparison, in terms of what horror/thriller conventions they have used. They are an American production company that was founded in 2001. The company specialise in producing horror films for distribution through the major cinema chains which is where we would like to see our film delivered to our target audience.  They have a reputation for properly funding their productions; for example their projected budget for ‘Amityville horror’ was $19,000,000 and ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ was $9,500,000. The likely budget for a full scale production of our film would be well within their scope and therefore I believe this media institution would be a perfect distributor for our film.

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

The target audience for our film are young men ranging from 16 to 35, who enjoy and have sufficient interest in horror and thriller films. The audience we aim to present this film to would typically be ‘ABC 1’ in social grade. This means the social groups are split into different categories in terms of their occupation and financial state – A being ‘upper middle class’, B including the ‘middle class’, C1 consisting of the ‘lower middle class’ and so forth. Therefore, our target audience of this particular social grade would typically have more disposable income to go to media venues, such as cinemas. “There are 12.8 million ABC1 men in Britain” (sourced from http://www.thinkbox.tv/ server/show/nav.914#Men2) - this statistic gives us an insight into how many people (our target audience) we would aim our media product to. This is supported by another quote I found from the website stated above: “Unsurprisingly, men in this group consume vast quantities of media… In terms of other media, newspapers, cinema and radio (largely sport and music) are popular choices amongst young men.” We chose men to be our target audience over women in particular, because of the general concept that men buy more media typically than women. This is not only supported by this quote, but it is a well-known fact that men are more of a consumer of the media. 

5.       How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted our target audience through the typical conventions of thriller/horror and have adapted these in order to capture the interest of our audience. We immediately captured our audience’s attention by careful choice and thought put into the soundtrack that was used in the opening shots. This soundtrack was key to demonstrate and capture the overall impression of the film. The soundtrack helped to produce the feeling and emotions of tension and anxiety that are typical of a thriller/horror film. It is of reference that our research in the film ‘Amityville Horror’ used a similar soundtrack. We endeavoured to ensure this was continued throughout our film. It was very important that the location we chose also enhanced the feeling that we wanted to portray, and helped to sustain the suspense alongside the soundtrack. We capture the audience's attention with the characters running in the first few shots. We filmed using these low-angle shots which helped us to create an atmosphere of fear and tension whilst  not revealing these characters – thus keeping the audience hooked. Meanwhile, the demeanour of the actor who is interviewing is also contributing to the effect of suspense. This is achieved through his dialogue, tone of voice and continued open question to his suspect. I feel the scripting both helped to address and attract our audience due to the dialogue revealing information about that is happening in the film and why. They learn that the dialogue is sourced from the interview scene (that is presented at the start and end of the opening sequence) and that it could thus attract our audience. Therefore, the viewer is now intrigued by our film and continues to watch to find out the outcome. We have achieved this from the evidence of our target audience feedback which states such opinions as: "...camera angles and effects and I think it builds up suspense really well..." "It's great! I can't wait to see the rest of it, it looks quite exciting and suspenseful."

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

I have learnt about various new technologies and how to use them from constructing this product. Firstly, creating and getting into a routine of updating the blog, whilst monitoring

my working partner's individual and group progress through the blog. Also, planning the shots we aimed to capture in the filming day helped me understand how to be using the camera and in what ways the camera can be implemented 
to capture the shot. However, when wanting to use the footage for editing on the Mac, we encountered some difficulty in transferring the shots because the AVI. files 
were required to be MOV. files in order for the Mac to process it. On the other hand, this was a small problem we overcame and I have learnt how to convert these files in order for the Mac to recognise and manipulate the footage. The camera allowed us to not only capture visual shots, but also capture background audio and dialogue that was later

non-diegetically added in during the editing process. For example, this can be seen/heard when Aidan was giving evidence to the interviewer and we used this dialogue over the shots of the forest scene. Another example could be where we non-diegetically added the ‘yell’ from Chris into the the blackout Furthermore, I have learnt how to use 'iMovie', a suite of film editing software available for Mac computers. I found this software daunting to use at first, but I feel I am now confident at producing advanced editing on films. This is shown by including such advanced skills as: fading shots/blackouts, interspersing text and commentary into other shots, adding effects onto the visual shots/audio in the shots and using a variety of transitions, etc. Also when using iMovie, I have figured out how to modify the audio and visual shots that we have edited. The audio, for example, has been edited in the dialogue of the interviewer (John Hinch) because his tone of voice we feel did not fit the stereotype of a police officer, plus how he appears in the mise-en-scene (the bald, serious looking man). Communication and organisation was a major part in the sense of learning how to work around each of our working partner's busy schedules. Despite these skills not being technological, I feel they were as equally as important in learning how to communicate effectively in the group in order for this product to be produced efficiently. 

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

In hindsight from creating our preliminary task, I feel we have made a vast progression in terms of learning how to plan and produce the final product. Firstly, I feel I have learnt a range of different camera shots compared to our preliminary task.  I feel that producing these camera shots was more achievable because of the location. The forest and open space of the location gave us opportunities to capture mid shots and long shots that weren’t necessarily available in the preliminary task. One shot I am particularly fond of when capturing the shots for the final product is at 0:50, where I placed the camera just off the tree so it created a blurring close up effect, whilst capturing an in-focus long-shot of Chris in the background. Another technique that I have learnt (that wasn’t featured as much in our preliminary film) was the various transitions that link the shots together. We used these transitions so that the shots run smoothly into each other. Also the transitions were used because of the change in scene or the ‘point-of-view’ from the different characters. For example, the antagonists view point where they are running toward the character that has fallen over – where we have added a (fade to) white flash at the end of the shot. This is to represent that the character has fallen over and is about to get attacked by the antagonist. We have produced a similar shot near the end, but instead with a blackout. At 1:24 in the film, the antagonist’s point-of-view shows Chris standing and looking at the antagonist, and then we have added a blackout. This interlinks with the progression of our soundtrack. I learnt that we can add and/or move the soundtrack (that we either capture diegetically or non-diegetically) and place it where we feel it is needed. Unlike our preliminary task, we have manipulated the (diegetic or non-diegetic) soundtrack and this can be seen in 1:24 for example, where we have a black-out and used a non-diegetic dialogue (or ‘yell’) that we captured in a sports hall where the acoustics created an effective echo. In addition to manipulating the soundtrack, we have successfully resourced some ‘eerie’ background music and incorporated it into our soundtrack in the full product. This is a significant enhancement over the preliminary task which only had the dialogue as the soundtrack (which was solely diegetic).