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

Looking back on the preliminary task, I feel I have made a lot of progression on the editing skills as before my skills were quite basic and now for the main task I feel more confident with these using Premier Pro. When we filmed our preliminary task I had no previous knowledge of editing but I had a basic understanding after going on Premier Pro to edit it. My editing skills developed when we were editing the film as I was able to learn what function the buttons did as we were editing such as the transitions.

Looking back on the preliminary task,  I feel I have made a lot of progression on understanding of how to use the camera and have a technical understanding as out of 10 I would have given myself 4 out of 10 and now I would give myself  7 out of 10. I now understand the majority of the terminology such as panning and a close up camera angle. I also believe that I have shown these skills through our main film for example we have a close up at the end of the main character to show the shock on her face.

Looking back on the preliminary task,  I feel I have made a lot of progression on the ability to film steady shots as out of 10 I would have given myself 4 out of 10 and now I would give myself 9 out of 10. When we were filming our preliminary task we having the camera handheld, this meant that some of the shots were wobbly. However when we were filming the main film we used a tripod this meant that the shots were still.

Looking back on the preliminary task, I feel I have made a lot of progression on understanding of filming conventions as out of 10 I would have given myself 4 out of 10 and now I would give myself  8 out of 10. I was able to identify basic horror conventions before I did the preliminary task however now I believe I can recognise and effectively use horror conventions such as an isolated setting for example we have used a woods in our film when the main character is walking home.

Looking back on the preliminary task, I feel I have made a lot of progression on the ability to avoid continuity errors as out of 10 I would have given myself 8 out of 10 and now I would have given myself  9 out of 10. In our preliminary task and main film we did avoid continuity errors. We avoided them by making sure the actor wore the same clothes when we were filming and was in the same position as when we were previously filming.

Looking back on the preliminary task, I feel I have made a lot of progression on the ability to select mise-en-scene including framing and composition as out of 10 I would have given myself 3 out of 10 and now I would give myself  7 out of 10. In our preliminary task we didn’t focus on the mise-en-scene such as props or costume, however in the main film we made sure we picked mise-en-scene such as costume that was effective so that the audience can relate to the character.  We focused on framing more in our main film for example we included a close mid shot of the characters hand touching the tree.

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

Hardware

From the process of constructing this product I have learnt how to use the Samsung NX100, as we used this camera for filming our main film. The strengths of this camera are that it has great video quality and is fairly simple to use. However a negative about the camera was the sound quality it struggled to pick up speech this could have been resolved with having a microphone near the actor but we were restricted as we were unable to get access to a microphone. But we resolved the problem by having the actor speak louder so the camera could pick up the sound.

From the process of constructing this product I have developed my knowledge of the computer we were using as all the software we needed was on this computer for example Adobe Premier Pro CS4, Internet and Microsoft. The strengths of this we were able to alter our work when we needed to as it was saved to the computer however sometimes the computer wouldn’t save my work and I would have to restart which is a big restriction on progression with the film but I overcame this by saving my work on a memory stick in addition to the computer.

Software

From the process of constructing this product I have learnt to use Adobe Premier Pro CS4, as this was the best software available for us to edit the film. A strength of using Adobe Premier Pro CS4 is simple to navigate around as I have never used it before, another strength is that the effects looked professional compared to software such as Windows movie maker which looks very amateur. However a weakness of using Adobe Premier Pro CS4 was that rendering and exporting was difficult as to begin with only rendered 20 seconds of our film however we solved this problem by dragging the timeline arrows in the correct places it then rendered and exported our entire film opening. Another weakness we encountered was how to increase the volume levels as it wasn’t to find this but we researched it on the internet and we were able to increase the volume levels.

From the process of constructing this product I have developed my knowledge of the internet by learning how to use Blogger to upload the planning, research and evaluation questions. A strength of Blogger is that is a modern way to upload our work, another strength was that we could edit our work and update changes we needed to make. It also helped me keep organised and it allowed me to keep a record of my learning journey.

From the process of constructing this product I have used Microsoft throughout as in the planning, research, production and evaluation stage as I have used word and PowerPoint to organise the film for example the shooting schedule, the analysis of the films we watched and to encode our film. I used Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 to encode our film however this was a weakness as our footage was temporarily lost as the camera we used automatically encoded our film this meant that we didn’t need to use Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 again.

Evaluation How did you attract/address the audience

One way we are attracting our target audience of 15+ year olds is through the use of mise-en-scene. The location of our film is in a school setting as the audience can relate to the setting as they are highly likely to go to school every day. This creates  a sense of jeopardy as schools are supposed to be a safe environment, however as our audience are highly likely to go to school every day so they will be more afraid as they could believe that it could be them in the characters position.  The costume we used in our film for the protagonist is the formal clothing for sixth form but she doesn’t appear to much like an adult this means our audience can relate to the character.

Another way we are attracting our target audience is through the use of mise-en-scene. We used young actors who are a similar age to the actor this means that the audience can relate to the character this means that the audience can feel involved in the film. Another way we attracted our audience through mise-en-scene is with the IPhone as most teenagers own an apple product of some description so we included an IPhone as our target audience can relate to owning this product therefore it creates a sense of fear for the audience.

We used horror conventions that target the fans of the horror by utilising the genre. For example we used woodland which is a typical horror location we did this to give the audience a secure feeling that it is a horror film.  We attracted our audience by using an isolated setting which was the woods that Amelia walks through as it is typical horror convention and our audience can relate to walking back from school as they are at the age when they regularly walking to and from school.

We have attracted our audience by using British signifiers such as the British countryside as we have used a British woodland which can be seen by the types of trees and weather. We have also used British actors to attract our audience this is proved when Amelia says ‘Is anyone there?’ in a British accent. We have also used another British signifier as the school is a British school, we have used British signifiers to attract our audience as our target audience is British therefore they will be able to relate to the film compared to if we set the film in United States of America as the audience can put themselves into that position.

We also considered Syd Fields’ concept of setup as Amelia is making her way home, then someone behind her grabs her shoulder and Amelia screams.

Evaluation Who would be the audience of our media product

Our target audience is a teenager aged above 15 years old to a young adult due to age restrictions. The gender of our audience is male and female; we have tried to avoid a negative representation of a female audience as our audience is primarily female. They would be interested in seeking thrill and be fans of the horror genre however it is likely that people that aren’t horror fans will see the horror movie as it could be the first horror movie they have seen or they have been peer pressured into watching the film.

Our target audience would be likely to shop at places such as ‘Hollister’, ‘Topman’ and looking for bargains in ‘Primark’ as all of these shops target a young audience when selling their products, by playing music that they enjoy and selling the clothes that are targeted towards young people. This means that we could advertise our product to our audience.

Our target audience  are also very likely to take part in activities such as socialise as if they are going to watch a film at the cinema then they are likely to be socialising with friends anyway.  They are also going to be interested in team sports such as football and if they are over 18 then they will probably enjoy drinking for socialising activities when they are with friends. We could use this to help advertise our film to our target audience as we can advertise our film in similar horror films at the cinema. We could also put film trailers on the adverts when the football is on as the target audience are likely to be watching the football match.

Our target audience will also probably eat at fast food chains or restaurants such as ‘Subway’, ‘McDonalds’ and ‘Pizza Hut’. These food chains are aimed at young people as are audience are likely to be energetic and have fast paced lives. This suggests that we could possibly have posters of our film in the food chains in order to increase awareness from our target audience about the film.

Our target audience will also have role models such as ‘Jared Padalecki’  because this actor appears in similar horror films that our audience usually watch for example he appears in ‘Supernatural’, ‘Friday the 13^th’ and ‘House of Wax’.

Our target audience will probably read magazines such as ‘Heat’, ‘Empire’ and other magazines that encourage gossip and what movies that could see to socialise with friends. We could use this to advertise our film by having an article about the film and exclusive interviews with the cast in order to gain interest and a ‘buzz’ around the film.
 

Evaluation What kind of media institution might distribute you media product and why

There are two distribution companies that we could use for our distribution company such as ‘Redbus Film Distributors’, and ‘Momentum pictures’. Both of them are British distribution companies and have distributed successful horror movies.

Out of these two distributors we would use ‘Momentum Pictures’ as they have distributed successful films such as ‘Sinister’, ‘The Woman In Black’ and ‘House At The End Of The Street’. These films are all successful horrors that are relatable to our film so we could achieve the same success as these films. ’Sinister’ and ‘The Woman in Black’ are both British films this means that our film can be distributed in the UK. ‘House At The End Of The Street’ is an American horror, this suggests that ‘Momentum Pictures’ we will be able to distribute our film in different countries. ‘Redbus Film Distributors’ was founded in 1997. They were the distributors of films such as ‘Jeepers Creepers’, ‘Cabin Fever’ and ‘House of the dead’. This wouldn’t be a good distributor as all these films are American horror films. As our film is a British horror and this film company have a history of distributing successful American films and not British horror films.

‘Cinema City’ distributes alternative films and they are mainly from small independent companies. ‘VUE’ distribute mainstream films and they try to target everyone with their film choices. ‘Odeon’ also distribute mainstream films but they try to focus on targeting young people with their films choices.

There is ‘Cinema City’ which does distribute horror films however I wouldn’t use this cinema as our audience aren’t likely to go to this cinema as they prefer mainstream films. There are two main cinemas chains ‘VUE’ and ‘Odeon’, 80% of the people I asked in my survey I conducted they said they would prefer to go ‘Odeon’ rather than ‘VUE’. The main reason was because young people the films that are shown at ‘Odeon’ as they are targeted at young people. Whereas ‘VUE’ do play similar films as ‘Odeon’ that are aimed at teenagers however some of the films are aimed at young children and some are aimed older audiences. I would use ‘Odeon’ to distribute our film as it plays mainstream films for our target audience.

‘Netflix’ is an online American film distribution company that has recently established itself in Britain and it is proving to be very successful in the UK.’LoveFilm’ is an  British distribution company it started off as just a postal service but it has expanded to online film rental. ‘YouTube’ does distribute a variety of mainstream and alternative of films. I wouldn’t use ‘YouTube’ to distribute our film as it is easier to make illegal copies of the film which means we wouldn’t gain a profit from people watching the film.

Using ‘YouTube’ as our online distribution company would be good as our target audience are likely to use ‘YouTube’ a lot as 90% of the people I asked in a survey said that they use ‘YouTube’ regularly, however it does raise problems such as the film is easier to make a pirate copy of, which means we won’t be able to make a profit. In a survey I conducted on our media class 60% of them said they preferred ‘Netflix’ rather than ‘LoveFilm’ this is because from the advertisements they got the impression that ‘LoveFilm’ had older films and films that weren’t targeted at them but at older people. Whereas the ‘Netflix’ has more recent films and films that interested them, this suggests that ‘Netflix’ target audience was the younger generation. Taking this into consideration I would use ‘Netflix’ as the online distribution company as it has the same target audience as our film and I believe it would successfully distribute our film. I believe ‘YouTube’ could be useful distributing trailers of the film as our target audience will be more aware of the film and more likely to watch it.

Evaluation How does your media product represent particular social groups

We aimed to follow the majority of the stereotypes as we didn’t want to alienate our audience by not making it explicit that our film is in the horror genre. However we did challenge some of the horror conversations to get an accurate representation of our audience so that they can relate to the character.

Our media product represents women as positively as the lead character is female and she is also the protagonist. My rationale is that by using mise-en-scene such as costume we have made the main character dressed in appropriate clothing instead of hypersexual clothing  as ‘Casey’ from ‘Scream’ answers the phone she is dressed to be presented hyper sexually and when she is asked about having a boyfriend she lies by replying with ‘no’, the caller knows she is lying as her boyfriend is tied up outside in her back garden.  Having our protagonist dressed in non-hyper sexual clothing allows the audience to connect with the character as she is more respectable. She also isn’t shown as the ‘damsel in distress’ as she calls out for the killer and goes up to the tree with blood to try and determine what is going on.  We were inspired by ‘Laurie’ from ‘Halloween’ as she defends the children she is babysitting from Michael and she believes she has killed him until Dr. Loomis shoots him six times we were influenced by women exhibiting strength and power.  Our film is quite feminist as the protagonist is female this shows we intending to have a feminist ideology.

Our media product represents the youth as innocent but clumsy. My rationale is that by using mise-en-scene such as the props for example we the phone we used has cracks on the screen which is a subtle message that shows the audience that she is a typical teenage girl. This was important as it is important to have our hero relatable to the audience so they can have a connection with the character. We have also presented the youth as being independent in our media product, my rationale is that she is walking in the woods without a group of friends or a sexual partner. We were influenced by ‘Samantha’ from ‘The House of the Devil’ as she is walking alone to her destination.

 

(Screenshot of 'Amelia' walking through the woods)

 

 

(Screenshot of  'Samantha' from 'House of the Devil' walking)

 

Our media product doesn’t represent men in the opening as they would have been too much going on in the scene however when we were planning for our other initial idea men were presented negatively as the male character was the antagonist. We would have represented men negatively in our film as we influenced by the two killers in ‘Scream’ and ‘Michael’ from Halloween as it is a horror convention to have a male antagonist.

(Screen shot of 'Michael' from 'Halloween')

 

Evaluate how much our media text uses, develops or challenges forms and conventions.

My vision of the horror conventions is that we stick to some of them for financial reasons, for example the woods are a horror convention and it is near the school. However we didn’t want to make a completely stereotypical horror film that followed all of the conventions as we wanted to stand out from other horror films and also to show that we understand the conventions of horror.  We also went against some of the horror conventions as the blonde girl being the victim is a horror convention to show we can make a mainstream commercial product without being to cliché. We made a mainstream film to target our audience as the majority of teenagers aren’t interested in art-house films due to them not being shown in cinemas such as Odeon and VUE. Therefore we have to provide a product that meets up to the audiences expectations of the horror genre.

One horror convention that is relevant in our film is the use of a conventional location. We chose to use the woods which are a typical genre code largely due to the connotations of isolation. We have used this convention as the woods are mysterious and isolated and they connote the fear of the unknown which is relevant to our film as the fate of the character isn’t known in the opening two minutes, and neither is the identity of the killer. We did this to create a sense of mystery and have the audience guess who the killer will be throughout the movie which means the audience will be more engaged in the film as they are constantly questioning who the killer to build tension, suspense and ambiguity as these are all common horror conventions. We used these conventions as the reason the girl is walking through the woods is to get home. This could make the audience feel afraid as our target audience are likely to walk home from school and this allows them to sympathise with the character by aligning our audience with the protagonist the sense of fear and jeopardy is being heightened.

 

(Screen shot of Amelia walking through the woods)

 

 

Another horror convention that is relevant in our film that develops these ideas is an isolated setting. We developed this convention as we have the main character alone studying in an empty classroom. Classrooms usually connote education and the audience will know it is a safe place to be as the majority of our audience have been in or will be experiencing still a classroom environment. We challenged this because we wanted to make the audience feel unsettled in what is supposed to be a safe environment to them as they are more likely to be frightened.  It also creates a sense of jeopardy as it is a horror convention that causes suspense and thrill for the audience. Although we felt we were developing with this, it should be noted that classrooms are a common location in some teen horror such as ‘Scream’ and ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’.

 (Screenshot from 'New Nightmare')

 (Screenshot from 'Amelia' - our film)

 

A third horror convention that is relevant in our film is a having a female character with blonde hair in the opening but we have challenged the stereotype of having this type of character dying first because we wanted to represent young women positively as she is the lead character we have done this by having her dressed in appropriate clothing instead of hypersexual clothing as we didn’t want to present her as a sexual object which can be a convention of horror films but we are challenging the male gaze theory as it you are also challenging the use of the male gaze, again a common convention of horror.  We also challenged this as the girl is on her own instead of being with a sexual partner or a group of friends. It shows that she is independent and isn’t the ‘damsel in distress’ it was important to do this as the audience will be able to relate with the character as they are likely to be independent.

Another horror convention that is relevant in our film is the blood, we used blood as it connotes violence and that someone has been injured or been killed. It connotes that there is something unusual in the woods and fear for the lead characters life. It was important to use this horror convention as it signifies to the audience that they are watching a horror film as in our survey most of them expected to see blood in a horror film. We made this decision to successfully target our horror audience.

Another horror convention is negative representation of a youthful character such as they are often outspoken, arrogant and they are also presented as stupid. We have gone against this stereotypical convention as our film has one teenage girl and she is represented positively as she is staying after school to study and she is presented as reasonably sensible, we did this as our target audience are young and they can relate to this character which means they are more likely to enjoy and be interested in the film as they can see themselves as that character.