Evaluation

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

To establish a narrative, we used a simple conversation between our characters to set the storyline for the film. However, a significant event we showed before the conversation was small clips of Moorecliffe during the opening credits. This way, the audience knows more than characters, which makes the audience know what the characters are getting themselves into. In addition to this, we also revealed some, but not all elements of the film’s plot. This draws the audience in, making them want to know more about the film’s plot and how it ultimately unfolds.

In my opinion, I think our film does look like our chosen genre (Psychological thriller) because it follows many of the conventions associated with the genre. I think this because we made the film darker whilst editing it. We also used chilling, peaceful music to juxtapose with the dark and strange atmosphere, which we created.

The darker colours shown in Se7en.

Inspired from this, we used darker colours in our film.

We also used conventional typography associated with the psychological thriller genre. Another conventional effect we used was the effects from the title sequence – many of which were inspired from se7en’s title sequence. Here, we see a strange surreal ‘double-vision’ effect that sets an abnormal mood from the beginning of the film. 

The double-vision effect in our film

The double-vision effect shown in se7en

Similarly to this, dark colours are used in the beginning of the film to set a dark and dreary atmosphere.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

I created a mind map to show how our media product represented different social groups.

What kind of media institution might distribute your film and why?

There are several distributors that could be a sensible choice to distribute our films. 

One of these could be Studio Canal UK (formerly known as Optimum Releasing). This is because they distribute many independent, British films such as Attack the Block and Four Lions – a category that our film falls into.

Another film distributor that could distribute our film could be New Line Cinema. I think this would be a suitable distributor because New Line Cinema has distributed many similar films to ours such as se7en and the final destination film series. Also, because New Line Cinema is a larger institution than Studio Canal UK, New Line Cinema would be able to mass market the film – making it available to a larger audience.

In our film feedback questionnaire, I think that we would have a potential audience who would watch our film at a cinema because 4 of the audience feedback response stated that they would watch our film at a cinema. 

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for our media product are young British adults who are interested in the psychological thriller genre.

In addition to this, because our film would most likely be a 15, the target audience for our film would be people who are no younger than 15. Because of this, we would be allowed to show strong language and violence, discriminatory language or behaviour, all of which are conventional of the psychological thriller genre. Other examples of age rated 15 psychological thrillers include Silence of The Lambs and The Sixth Sense.

The pre-production research we performed was two questionnaires that we distributed using the Internet to several social networking websites such as Facebook.

The first questionnaire was made before we started producing our film. We asked what they thought about our concept and whether or not we had a potential audience for the film. The responses we received were somewhat positive and many people were really interested in the psychological thriller aspect of the film.  Most of these people were older teenagers from Britain. There was no clear majority of gender in our responses.

A link to the response from our questionnaire can be found here and here 

Our second questionnaire was distributed after our film was finished. We asked our potential audience of our film whether or not they liked the first 2 minutes of the film  and 5 out of the 8 response  said they enjoyed it.

In response to this feedback, we developed our film to suit our audience’s feedback. For example, we used characters that are similarly aged to our target audience. This way, our audience can relate more closely to the characters in the film. 

How did you attract / address your target audience?

 To attract our audience, we used a young cast. Because of this, we felt that the audience could relate to the characters and empathise with their situation and the roles they are put in.

In addition to this, we used questionnaires to find out what our audience would like to see in a film. We distributed the questionnaire by using social networking sites such as twitter and Facebook – an ideal platform that is used by many of our target audience, which was younger people, over the age of 15.

The responses we received about what people thought about film was mostly positive. One of the criticisms was that the introduction was too over-edited. Despite taking this into consideration, we opted not to change the film’s editing style because we felt that it represented the psychotic nature of the murderer better than having a simplistic style of editing.

I think we reached our target audience because our film was a psychological thriller – something which a lot of our target audience was particularly interested in.

Another thing we included in our film to address / appeal to our audience was showing two students at college. Because a majority of our audience was 16, this implies that they are students. Because of this, we felt that the audience could relate more to the students. 

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

http://www.slideshare.net/jack94barnes/6-what-have-you-learnt-about-the-technologies-from-the-process-of-constructing-this-product

7 – Looking back on your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the final product’

Overall, I think that we have made significant progress, in terms of quality, from our initial preliminary task, where we filmed a simple conversation in a continuity style by using techniques such as match on action, following the 180 degree line rule and shot reverse shots.

We incorporated these techniques into our main task when we had a conversation scene. We used these techniques because it helps the scene to flow, as well as making it seem natural.

In addition to this, we created a title sequence / info to establish an eerie and chilling atmosphere. To do this, we added a darker, conventional grading effect during the editing of our film. As well as this, we experimented with overlaying different video tracks to create a hallucinogenic effect

In my opinion, we got better at script writing because our dialogue feels and sounds more natural and not as forced as it is in the preliminary exercise.

A different method we used for filming is when we used two cameras during our conversation scene. Not only did this allow our group to film two scenes at once – decreasing the time needed to film, but it also allowed us to film the same take from 2 angles.  This made it easier to have matches on action and removed the possibility of cuts not cutting with fluidity when we used multiple takes of the same thing.

Overall, it improved our efficiency when filming and improved the overall product.