Evaluation
1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We have incorporated many generic scenes in our horror that an audience can find in many horrors. For example, in our film there are a few scenes where a killer will remain hidden hidden from main characters but visible to the audience. This creatte a sense of uncertainty and suspense.
We feel we have developed thse generic conventions by further hiding the killer in our film from the audinece and even confusin and mystifying them as well as the main character in the film. We feel that our use of convention do indicate what sub genre our sequence is. Our use of chasing a main character on his/her own indicates the traditonalistic slasher genre. We also feel that the protaganists need to use a mask also defines our sequence as a slasher.
We have been heavily influenced by the classic and iconic slasher films of the 70s and early 80s. We think that the inlfuence from the film Halloween 2 can be seen in the following clip. We feel we have taken inspiration from Halloween 2's use of chacter unawreness for danger.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
We do not really represent any social groups in our film in any significant way. We have a teenager as a mina character in our film and have tried to incorporate the costume of that teenager to what a typical teenager in the UK would wear.
We feel that gender has represented in stereotypical ways and the opposite in our film. We feel that the killer being male is stereotypical in the fact that men are more dominate than women and it is assumed that a woman would not be capable of committing such an offence against a man. On the other hand our film also shows that men can also be easy and helpless victims which seems to be a stereotypical opinion for many women despite the fact that many horror films over the years have depicted men being helpless and eventually facing death from others.
In relation to the audience I feel that our opening sequence can show two things. It shows that teenagers are a vulnerable age range and it can make them think that they have the potential to be in as much danger as any other age group. Another thing I think that the audience will get from our opening sequence is that they may think twice about gender as the audience will start to think that men can be in as much danger as women.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
To an extent we feel that our opening sequence could be produced by Hollywood because we have incorporated many techniques and horror clichés that have seen others become a success. The popularity of these techniques may interest Hollywood as high revenue can be guaranteed due to its popularity. However on the other hand it is also possible that our movie could also be produced by independent film makers or possibly even be made in a TV movie. Our reasons for this are due to the cheap budget that can be used in our film. We believe we can still deliver everything we want to the audience in terms of entertainment, social and gender values. This also wouldn’t necessarily stop the film from being a hit like any other Hollywood film as Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre were huge slasher films produced by independent film makers. Furthermore we think that our film has the potential to be an internet release due to the our film being targeted and related to teenagers. We believe teenagers use the internet for social and leisure more than any other age group and I think that an internet release would be suitable to primarily get our film across to our demographic.
Our film could have open to merchandise. Other slasher films in the past have experienced successful merchandise releases and we think that our antagonist has the potential to be popular enough to see products branding his image. We could see replica masks and action figures being made. Here is an example of products from other slasher we aim to use as inspiration for our own film. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3JdexuhU_erFjSSZoWoIJehNuUaugJtvm4Mco854pyRO-vk03VQJVMfWbN5_fETeT5PIGIkhtq7DG0BL9pDUabTQOlURzf9oJ-lSgl7pF4ustjmn3h-yt9jjkn6ZhaIapqyohKgO3dmk/s640/41V4hZY3eZL__SL500_AA280_.jpg. Our film could potentially be released as video game. However we are put off by the lack of releases from other famous horror genres and disappointing reviews that the Saw video game were given, although they spawned enough revenue to create a sequel.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
Due to our opinions on the rating of our film, which we think will be a 12 due to the fact, there is no sexual content, gore or drugs we are aiming our film at teenagers. Furthermore due to the fact our main character is also a teenager we felt that our film is something teenager will want to see because it their age group that is being used and being represented. This would also make our film accessible to more people and would also allow younger people to be exposed to this genre, as a result we are promoting this genre. Other films like this would The Others, a film that contained hardly any explicit content so it was given a 12 rating making accessible to younger audiences yet it has had the same impact on the genre as many other explicit horrors.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
Looking back at our audience profile I think that there is range of points in our film that would terrify our audience. For example I think that scenes where we have helped use diagetic sounds to emphasise actions would scare our audience especially if they are new to the horror genre, which may be likely due to the fact that our films can be so accessible to a wide range of ages due to its lack of explicit content. I also feel the way we have edited our film visually so it looks dark and misty can also create an unsettling atmosphere for our audience. Finally again we also think that due to the fact that the main characters are teenagers that teenagers may want to see the film because their age range is being so heavily used. We think we can have the same effect that characters such as Wonder Woman and Charlie’s angels had, because the protagonists were women women became the majority of its audience which is hat we think we will recreate by having teenagers in our film.
6. Filming process
We found there were many strengths with the camera. For example the camera was very portable which helped us lot considering the long distances we had to travel to our location to film. Furthermore the fact that the camera has a HDD drive and is digital this made it much easier to import our videos into a Mac to edit our film. On the other hand there were weaknesses with the camera. For example, there were other cameras, which could have produced higher quality pictures.
When filming we did encounter a few problems. Because we filmed outdoors in a public place at times we did find when looking back through some of the footage that there were some people in the background of the film. Furthermore because the full team was acting we did not have a sole cameraman, which left us to only still shots when both of us were in a scene. Finally the last problem we encountered when filming was lighting. Again because we were filming outdoors and slightly different times the sky was sometimes brighter on one day than the other (also effected by weather) we feel we have overcome this problem though through editing the contrasts and brightnesses of the scenes in our film. On the other hand we had to get rid of some shots that had unwanted people in the background but luckily we did have sufficient alternative shots to replace them so we didn’t have to re-film, which gave us more time to work on our film.
We learned a lot about editing. We learned that through editing we could achieve our overall aim of our film and scare tour audience. For example, we edited the lighting of the film, which helped captivate our audience in a dark atmosphere. We furthermore used music and sound effects to emphasise import actions in some scenes to shock the audience. We were heavily reliant on this as we did not have any gore and we think that we did manage to scare audience through using sound only and no gore. I think overall it had the impact that we wanted on our mise en scene as we like I have said previously that we manages to create a stereotypical horror generic atmosphere.
Garageband was very important to us as without this sound for our film would have been almost impossible. We used this program to firstly edit the lengths of our sounds so that they fit perfectly with the scenes that were going to assign them to. Furthermore it also helped us export our sounds into a format that was readable in the program we were using to edit our full film (Final Cut). Overall Garageband had a massive part in making our film and is its use can be seen heavily throughout our film.
7. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I have learned much about the process of making a good film that meets the brief. I now understand that much detailed planning is vital to make to make a good film. I have learned about what kinds of films are successful and I have looked further into their use of conventions and have tried to incorporate this into our film. For example, in horror films I have learned that the more critically praised films have very good scores such as Halloween, The exorcist and Psycho. Therefore as a result I wanted to make sound a priority in our film and have tried to use as much good effective sounds to help emphasise scenes our film much the like Alfred Hitchcock’s use of sound n the famous “shower” scene. I have also learned that storyboarding also played a big part into planning what shots were going to take and in what order we were going to take them. Furthermore I think it was a good also good method into explaining to others and ourselves as to why we were using the shots that were documented. This overall helped the whole filming process become much smoother.
Yes I think that my use of shot types has improved such as the use of shot/reverse shot in the film. I think I have used this type of shot out to common kind of scenes it is assigned to such as dialogued scenes. In our film I have used it show what was lurking behind a character. I furthermore I think I have also improved at filming at different angles. I have tried to incorporate a lot of angles in our film, I think that our film has a lot of different angles such as low angles, high angles and I even incorporated shots were we filmed one scene from two opposite sides creating a larger perspective of the subject in the film.
I think we have fully met the brief. The brief states:
1. Film must be horror or film noir
2. Must be opening sequence of that genre that lasts for approx 2 mins
3. It must have appropriate titles
I think we have met brief point one as we feel we have included many conventions in our film that can be found in a horror film. Such as a masked antagonist that seeks to kill innocent people. We have a dark setting, which again can be found in countless horror films to achieve the effect of a dark atmosphere. Finally we have a used sound to make audiences jump, a common horror convention. Again we have met brief point 2 as our film does last for two minutes. Finally once again we also feel that we have met brief point number three as we feel that we have used appropriate titles. We have included producers, directors, actors and the title of the actual film.
