Evaluation
1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of media products ?
There are many ways in which our two minute film incorporates generic conventions, for example the very first scene shows a person running frantically away from a foe, he is sprinting at full speed and looks scared and desperate, desperation is a common theme within our film but is extremely common within the horror genre.
One other way in which our film incorporates generic conventions is with the fact that it doesn’t use many vivid and bright colours, it instead ops to use darker seedier colours that attempt to make the audience feel slightly more scared. An example of this in our film is the scene where the victim fall onto the bench, all the colours within the scene except for the characters upper body clothing are dark and almost dim, they offer a more mysterious feel to the audience. Most if not all genuine horror films are set mostly in dark places and feature very dark colours on the screen.
Our film features a villain which is shown to be very powerful and unlike the victim he always remains calm and collected, he is portrayed as powerful and never gets effected by the situation he is surrounded by, this common within the genre, the villain is, like in our film, shown to be stronger than other characters in the films.
We tried to make our film have an element of surprise and a individual identity, we tried to give it a uniqueness with the shots we used and we did this by implementing shots such as a relatively long handheld shot that is used to confuse and bewilder the viewer, we tried to make our film settle into a pattern and then chance the pattern at random times so that you can never settle whilst watching our film, it keeps you on edge and wondering what is going to come next and how it will be implemented.
One of our conventions indicates that another film as influenced our work is with the design of our main villain, we looked closely at the main villain from “see no evil” and realised with the help of that what we wanted our character to look like, we decided our villain would be very strong and slow moving, his identity would not be fully revealed thus adding mysteriousness to this appearance, we decided he would rely on brute power not advanced knowledge to strike his victims. Also the characters outfit was slightly influenced by “see no evil” like that film we decided that our character would wear dull boring clothes.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our film consists of only male characters that are all of a relatively young age, these males are all white. In one way our characters do fit the stereotype of men been dominant in the way that the villain is very strong and assertive, and seems to be very masculine. On the other hand though we have a male character that is apparently very weak, and who is running away from the other character whilst been scared and he does fit the typical male stereotype. This may link into the target audience slightly as if there are no females, female members of the audience may have no character to relate to, although saying that our film is aimed at almost any audience.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Our film as the potential to be made by an major Hollywood studio as it features every aspect that would make it succeed, if this was the case our film would and should be released at a specific time and date, for example it is an horror film so should be released around Halloween or sometime in winter where it is dark early as this adds atmosphere for the viewer if it is dark when there going into cinema they will be more nervous than if it was a bright sunny day. Aspects of our film can be scene as similar to other films such as the chase seen where the victim is running away from the villain but in many other ways it is unique. Our film would be released at most cinemas around the UK to begin with, it would be released in the hope that it would make substantial amounts of money.
The opportunity for merchandising is relatively limited when you compare it with other films, one reason for this is that simply it is an horror film with only appeals to certain people and is hard to sell say figures of the characters when one of them is a murder. There are still chances for merchandising though in ways such as posters, or T-shirts. It would be hard for our film to sell merchandise from mise en scene within the film because people may not be willing to buy replica outfits of lumberjacks.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product
I think our film can be watched by any film lover really but the main audience who will view our film will be 15 - 35 year olds, this is for several reasons, such as the actors are of a young age and will appeal to young people. But on the other hand to this the story is deep and complex that's what will attract the older people to the film. Their are films that have similar aspects as our film such as the “Saw” series, they have a similar mentality to our film and they have a very large fan base and appeal to most people. The best age classification for our film would be an age rating of 15, this is because it features storylines unsuitable for younger viewer yet it is not graphic enough to warrant and 18 rating. http://www.bbfc.co.uk/
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
To attract the relatively younger audience that we thought would want to view our film we had to make the film contents relatable to younger viewers, so for example we had the cast be young in age so that other people would relate to them. Also one other way we targeted a specific younger audience is by having one of the scenes set within a school, this would make people who are at college and school think that this film is more realistic and could have happened to everyone.
Furthermore we tried to get at the younger audience with some of the camera work for example one of our point of view shots the audience are being put into the position of the man who is scared and running away, by doing this they can relate to his fear more than normal, they can understand what he is going through. Also when they are in the point of view of the man running away they are thinking at all times what is going to happen to the character and this helps create suspense.
6. What have you learnt about technology from the process of constructing the product?
We learnt much about the camera that we where using, we learn how to use it effectively and how not to use effectively, for example we noted that the camera we used was not suitable if their was alot of wind in our outside scene. One other limitation that we found out about the cameras is that the battery life is not really that long. One of the advantages of the camera is that it allowed us to take good quality film with ease and was easily accessible to all our group members.
We did face many problems during filming, some very small stupid issues caused by us such as one character having different things on in different shots, we also faced one relatively big editing problem when the hand position wasn’t the same in one of our conversation scenes therefore would not edit correctly. To resolve this issue we added on effect instead of a cut between to the two shots and after looking back at it, it is clear that it worked out, if not better, very well.
We used final cut pro to edit our film. We found final cut pro to be a very good and easy to used software which benefited our film greatly, it allowed us to uses simply effects to add tension to our film and also allowed to use sound effects which emphasises certain points of our film.
We learned many different things between the two stages of the task. The first thing that we learnt was in-depth knowledge of the genre and what is needed within the genre to make a film from the genre successful. For example we learnt that most horror movies featured dark setting and dim colours, we then incorporated that into our own film. As a group we viewed many different horror movies that have aspects that relate to ours and looked at things such as how were they edited and what were the people within the film wearing, we also looked at what camera shots were used. It is common within horror films to have the camera looking up towards the villain and that what we tried to do while filming ours to give the villain that extra bit of power and authority.
After looking at examples of match on action and point of view shots we gained more confidence in using them and then tried to implement more complex shots such as this into our film, when you do put more complex shots such as these into your film it gives your film more professionalism.
We have used the equipment alot and I now feel comfortable with it and was I every to use it again I feel I could get straight on with the task and not worry about my knowledge of the equipment.
I feel that our end product turned out well in my opinion, we realised some of the shots we wanted to do and edited the film with the way we had in mind, although there is always room for improvement and an improvement we could have made would be to film more shots as back-up in case some shots dont edit correctly
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