Evaluation

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

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

Our media production represents differnet social groups in different ways, we have represented a typical young couple who seem quite wealthy by the signifiers we have used. We have then represented each of the 3 main characters in different ways, firstly there is the female lead who we have tried to represent according to Laura Mulveys theory. Laura Mulveys theory argues that the spectator is inevitably put in a masculine position and the woman on screen are seen as the passive object of desire. It also argues that female leads are either reprsented as a whore (dangerous and flirtatious) or a madonna (innocent and caring). It also places the male as the active character-doing the action on screen and the female as the passive character-having the action done to her. We have used this theory to represent our female lead representing her as a madonna by our choice of costume, putting her in pale and 'girly' colours like pink. This also conforms to the gender theory where males are typically seen as strong, tall and powerful conforming to typical male stereotypes where people assume males will be all of those things. Our female lead conforms to the typical female assumtions that they are quiet, weak and loving shown in our production by quick clips of her serving the male lead dinner and pouring him wine. However at the beginning when she is preparing dinner we give her a knife almost signalling danger, going against the gender theory showing she could be quite tough. This works well as me and Sarah had originally planned the whole plot of the film where the female lead saves the male from the mysterious men breaking all the previous assumtions of females.

Another social group and stereotype we used was the typical strong male. We had our male come home from work a typical stereotype that males are the ones who go out and bring in the money whilst females are at home making dinner and looking after the house. We had him in a black jumper and black trousers with proper shoes carrying a briefcase conforming to his typical role of 'breadwinner'. We also related this back to Laura Mulveys theory having him entering the house and walking into the female from his angle so the audience are looking at it from the males perspective and its him doing the action of walking into the kitchen.

Our last character is the stranger in the house, representing him as mysterious and representing the social groups of the 'killers' from horror films. We have tried to keep him as mysterious from the audience as possible. Already we were conforming to the gender theory by using a male, we used a male because typically the audience would find a male more intimidating rather than female assuming that males are more stronger and powerful than females. We dressed our 'killer' in all black to try and keep him more mysterious, me and Sarah debated on using red as that could signify danger and blood but it can also signify love and passion so not to get them confused we chose black which creates a sense of unease around the character. We used close up shots of his face to keep him unidentified and the audience worried, showing only the back of him or close up of his eyes revealing scars on his head. This shows his is quite a dangerous character and conforms to the typical 'killer' character.

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

Our media product would be marketed to a mass audience, horror films are widely marketed and are a very popular type of genre. Given that our film is a British one it would definatly be released in England, but if it had enough hype or was widely popular it would probably then go on and be marketed at the American market. The media institution that would distribute our product would be quite a large production company that produces high interest films that they would know to sell well. They would market the film heavily focusing on television adverts, radio broadcasts, having cast interviews on television shows. They would also have billboards and magazine adverts. Being such a large company and making quite a 'safe' sort of film they would be able to broadcast the adverts nationally focusing on the target market of young adults/teens.

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

The typical audience for our horror film would be the younger generation the age ranging from about 18 to 25, they would obviously enjoy horror films. At first we felt that the genders would be pretty even but as our graph shows it seems that males enjoy horror films more than females. So our typical audience member would be male, between 18-25, he would probably like action sort of games that have violence and gore within them given that all horror films contain at least blood and probably violence.

Our target audience would also typically be quite down to earth and be able to relate to the characters in our film. This is also why we thought couples would sit down and watch our film because ours involves a couple who seem pretty average, the couple could probably relate to the characters making the film more scary thinking that it could happen to them.

5.How did you attract/address your audience?

Our opening of our film attracts the audience straight away by keeping it fast paced and establishing the genre immedietly. We have done this by having short clips of dead people that gets the audience asking questions like who are they? And what happened to them? This keeps the audience involved and makes them at unease already.

This shot of a dead person in a bath already signifies danger through the use of 'blood'. It will keep the audience engaged especially as we have just specified that our target audience is males who enjoy electronic war games that typically have a lot of blood and violence in. This will immedietly keep the audience attached and address their preferences within the genre horror.

In this shot we have one of our characters dead in a bed, we chose to have them dead in a bed to keep the fear apparent in the audience. They would feel less at ease at home thinking and watching that someone was killed in bed. We have also used 'blood' again firstly showing a close up of the hand covered in 'blood' then panning up to reveal the body dead.

We then addressed the audience by using a typical couple that anyone could relate too.

This would relate to the couples we had targeted that would watch our film, as like our shot they too would be sat down watching the film. This would involve them and address them as they would feel that it could happen to them and can easily relate to the couple shown on screen.

Finally the scream right at the end of our production keeps the audience wanting to know what happens and why he took her. It keeps them asking questions like the begining of our production and makes them more involved with it. A scream is also a clear audio code signifying danger and the audience will clearly know something bad and dangerous has happened.

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

I have learnt vast amounts about the technologies used, at the begining I had never really used imovie or even an Apple imac so I had to learn about them from the start. To film our production we used a DV camera which was pretty simple to use and easy to understand, we decided on using a tripod on most of our filming because we felt this gave the film more of a professional feel. After filming we had to upload our footage on to an Apple imac computer to the software imovie. This was completely new to me and it took a while to get used too, however after I became familiar with the software it was quite easy to use. They could be tempermental at times and uploading footage was very time consuming but using imovies effects really brought our movie forward. The effects and sound clips were very useful to help build tension throughout our production and without them our film wouldn't have had the same tension or feel to it.

There was another problem not being able to use copyrighted music within our production however the use of garageband was useful. It was tricky to use at first not knowing how to work garageband but quickly got the hang of it. We recorded our dramatic music and happy music through the use of a keyboard connected to a imac and imported it to itunes where we then put into our production. We also used garageband to record the knock and scream because imovie did not have these sounds.


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

Looking back at the preliminary task I feel that I have improved and leart alot in relation to filming and editing. When me and Sarah had set out to film the preliminary task we planned little, not doing any storyboards or scripts but simply brainstorming our ideas and developed it in our heads. This was time consuming when it came to filming because we didn't plan exactly how we were going to film it and what shot types we were going to use and when. This is something we made sure we did in our full product as we had learnt that planning was important before filming because it can be very time consuming on the day of shooting not knowing exactly what we are going to film. Editing the preliminary task was also a learning curve for me not knowing how to use the software beforehand. I learnt a lot about how to edit sound and add effects to clips aswell as cutting down the clips effectively. Looking back at the preliminary task I feel we didn't cut the clips enough and this is something we obviously realised and learnt to make our full product better. Audience feedback was also important and the constructive criticism of first cuts of our full product really helped us get an oursiders perspective. For example on our first cut the section of our female and male eating dinner was about 6 or 7 seconds longer, the audience responded to this and felt it dragged on too long, after discussing me and Sarah decided to cut the clip down and it really made a difference to the flow of the production. If our preliminary task was to have audience feedback it may have changed the way we saw it and exposed flaws that me and Sarah didn't notice.