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Evaluation

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

Our film does comply with conventions of film. I think that it is important because it is mainly the conventions that attract people to these types of films. The genre of our film (Psychological Thriller) is not one of the frequently released genres, yet it still has a large fan base. This means that we need to still attract the fan base by using conventions of the genre but we also needed to make the film original. I think we have managed to do this by using split screens which are rarely used in films.
We have used the convention of having a character with mental health problems. I think that this is a convention of the genre because it is open to interpretation and can be manipulated to link with other conventions, for example Murder. We have linked the mental health problems of our character with her substance abuse, which is another convention of the genre.
We have not complied with all of the conventions. This is because we wanted our film to be original, which is important because we want to make something the audience hasn’t already seen. For this reason we have left out conventions, (e.g. Ghosts) which in my opinion have become over done, leaving the film unoriginal and even boring. This would not attract people to see our film.
We have tried to develop conventions by making one that is not used in many films- our split screen scenes. This is to make our film stand out from the rest of the films in the genre. It would also give the audience more to look at in each frame which would make them more engaged in the film which. I hope, will make the movie more exciting.


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

Our product shows the polar opposite of teenage people. The boy character is seen as a nice, sensible person who is seen visiting a grave. This shows that he is thoughtful and loving, as he is still visiting a grave years after the persons death. He is also seen buying flowers, which may suggest that he is a romantic. The girl, however, is completely different. She is seen drunk, staggering across roads, completely unaware of her surroundings. This shows that she is a “typical boozy teen” that is often portrayed in the newspapers e.c.t. Her costume is scruffy compared to the boys, which suggests that she is of a lower economic class than him This may portray the stereotype of lower economic class members, suggesting to the audience that all teenage girls of a low class group, binge drink to a point where they are so unaware of there surroundings they walk in front of a moving car. The boy could represent the middle classes as he is seen wearing a suit, however this is a typical stereotypical view which may offend people.


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

I do not think that our film will attract high profile Hollywood film companies e.g. Universal, because they do not specialise in low budget films as they are mainly looking for a large profit, which small films usually do not make. Therefore I will be looking for my film to be produced by a small English film company e.g. The Oxford Film Company. I have chosen this company in particular because of its links to film four which makes our film more likely to be viewed by people, at home, on the television. They also support English films as they are hoping to raise English film profiles throughout the world and are making the way for breakthrough acts.


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

The target audience for our film are people aged from 16-24. This is because it is the main group of people who watch films and it is the main fan base of our genre- psychological thrillers. We could not lower the age of our target audience because we are aiming for our film to be rated 15. Therefore if the age our target audience was below this certificate our film would be less successful because they would not be able to watch it.


5. How did you attract your audience?

We noticed that there hadn’t been many psychological thrillers released recently and that there was not a lack of demand for a product of this genre. We then thought that we should come up with a film of this genre and that we should make our film original to make it stand out from the other films that have been made in the past. Because this genre is rarer than other genres, there is a larger demand for the film, so the type of film itself will attract the audience to watch it.


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

During the process of making our film I have learnt to use several different technologies. I hadn’t used this type of camera prior to filming, so it took a while to figure out what I had to do to get the desired end product. After filming we had to edit, which was also something we had never done before. The software was very difficult to use and it took a long time before we could edit properly, using the right effects to match the mood we were trying to set. Trying to edit was also very time consuming before we found easier ways of getting the same product, which required trial and error. I could have learnt more if our supplies were not limited e.g. if we had access to proper lighting.
I have also become more competent using blogs which is something I have never done before this project. I also had to upload and embed videos off of http://www.youtube.com/ which is something I also haven’t done before, as I only used to use YouTube to watch videos.


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

I think that I have learnt how to become more efficient at editing, which was very useful as less time was wasted and more was spent reshooting and improving our end product. I also think that I have learnt to improve a video, where as before (in the preliminary) if I didn’t like it I would want to change the entire film rather than just some scenes. I have also realised the importance of overshooting. If some scenes were of poor quality in our preliminary, we did not film enough to replace them. This caused us many problems and ended up wasting alot of time. Therefore in our main task we over shot every scene just incase the lighting, for example, was not of good quality. Due to poor technology in our preliminary task we decided not to use any speech in our main task. This was because in our preliminary the sound quality was extremely poor and inconsistent, so we decided not to use it in order to prevent time lags between the sound and the person seen talking(without sound) on the screen.

How we edited the video

To create the black and white effect we:

• selected the section of the video in the main timeline.


• opened up video effects folder and select image control, black and white


• draged it onto the video clip

To create the white flashes/fades we:

• opened up the video transitions folder and select disolve, addictive disolve


• draged it onto the end of one scene and the beginning of the other

How we slowed the video down:

• right clicking on the section of the video


• selecting speed/duration and set it to 50%

We also changed the brightness of the video by:

• clicking on video effects, image control, brightness


• setting it to 50%

Final cut- A distant memory

Reshoots

After we recieved opinions from a research audience we decided to use their feedback to decide what we should refilm. We reshot the girls door scene and the girls shop scene, this was because the lighting was not very good which affected the quality of the video.

Locations
Nisa shop for the walking scene
Lauras house for the door scene

Character
Laura as Katie

Props
Vodka bottle filled with water

Costume
Rose print dress and grey hoodie

Documentation
Kayleigh Harris (me)- Filming
Grace Bovan- Process shots

Facebook group and feedback

Many films use social networking sites to advertise films. This is an example of how films are using new technology in order to reach out to their target audience who use it. The most popular target audience is 18-26 year olds and the main users of social networking sites such as facebook are also 18-26 year olds. This suggests that film companies are locking onto a new advertising market which was not available before the technical revolution.
We have created a facebook group like other film companies do, but ours is not to advertise, it is to discover what people think of our rough cut. It is important to research this in order to gather different peoples opinions.
This is some of the feedback we received:

• "In some scenes the tops of heads were cut off."
• "The car screeching made it obvious that she had died. Wasn't it supposed to be mysterious?"
• "The second song didn't really fit with the rest of the film"
• "Time zones are not clear"
• "Needs to be a more obvious link between the characters which would probably make the overall story line clearer"
• "Make the characters relationship more obvious"

We have taken the feedback on board and we will make some alterations in particular the car scene and the sound effects. I think that a major problem is that in some scenes the framing is too low which leaves the characters head outside of the frame. However, to re correct this it would mean re shooting those scenes and we do not have enough time to do so.

Rough cut