Tuesday 17 April 2012

Emily's Evaluation

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)




Location
Our thriller opening develops all the conventions of a horror opening in the following ways. Instead of our opening being a typical traditional thriller; haunted house, graveyards etc (Dracula or Frankenstein) we chose our opening to come across modern and different. Throughout our opening, there is a swap between the bathroom scenes which are currently happening, to the dark ( black and white ) forests scenes which are 'Emily's' memories. I find it very effective the way there is a large contrast between the deserted forest scenes and the domestic bathroom scenes; makes our opening a lot more interesting and different.


As you can see, to the left is a print screen image of the deserted forest used in our opening. Just by looking at this image, it sets an extremely chilling and scary atmosphere; conventional. 




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

For question 2, Instead of using the blogger, I have produced my answer in 'Prezzi' 
Below is the link ----->


http://prezi.com/oc_oq-qwnwda/edit/#18









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


I am going to talk about one main institution that i believe to be relevant for distributing our thriller opening. This main institution is Revolver Entertainment. 


Revolver_logo_200x40.gif Revolver Entertainment is a marketing-lead, all rights film distribution company. Founded in 1997, the company has operations in both London and Los Angeles. Revolver's main target audience, i find, is teenagers aged between 15-19; aimed at UK youth. I think that Revolver Entertainment are very good at finding their target audience. Most of the films they produce don't have a very high budget, however the films still come out very dramatic and 'gritty' which helps them find the right target audience. 

One film that Revolver entertainment have produced is 'SKET'. Sket is an urban retribution thriller film set in East London from the makers of Shank and Anuvahood. I find that this film really relates to our thriller opening. Our target audience is also aimed at young teenagers. We want our target audience to be able to relate to our opening;  Like the film 'SKET'. 

Below is an image of front cover to the film 'SKET' --->

sket-2011-movie-poster-01.jpg 




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


As a group we believe that our thriller opening is mainly aimed at young teenagers, aged between 15-18 year olds. This is due to many reasons. I find that also, our opening is aimed mostly at females, this is because our main character is female; females can relate. 

We wanted our thriller opening to come across modern rather than traditional. Having a modern thriller will straight away attract young teenagers rather than people aged 40+. This is mainly because teenagers will understand more and find everything more interesting as it relates to them a lot more.
I believe that our opening links more to films such as 'SKET' and '4321' for an example. However, the film 'se7en' or 'The Grudge' defiantly do not relate to our opening simply because we have more of a modern perspective on our final product.


 To the left is a screen shot is of the website 'Comparable Profile'. From looking at this image, you can see that the main age group that went to see this film is 15-24 year olds. This is basically the same as our target audience age group.


Our thriller opening is going to be a 15 certificate. This is due to the fact some violent scenes are presented. However, there are no sexual scenes or strong language used.





5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Below is the final product; our thriller opening. Annotations have been added to this video by yasz and myself.
----->







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






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


Personally, i find that that i have learnt many new important and useful skills from when we started making our prelims to now.

Below is our prelim task we did at the start of the year. While making this, i was new to the important techniques while filming. For example all the different types of shots to make a film interesting ( Pan shot )
While making the prelim, the skills we were told to use, were close-up, match-on-action, 180 degree rule and shot-counter-shot. For me, these were all rather new to me; never really used them before. By combining all these different techniques I learnt that it creates coherent logical flow to the action (continuity editing)

However, I still found it rather simple to get used to, and over all this project was very interesting to make as it was my first.
Watching my prelim back, straight away I can pick up a few mistakes which were made. This shows me that i have improved my ability in this area.

- An example is that, in my prelim i used a close up shot of Eloises hand on the door, to emphasize the fact she is going to open to door and is going somewhere else. On the other hand, in my Thriller opening, I used a close up shot of the girls hands to emphasize her emotions, and to add tension to the scene.


                                                                                                             
PRELIM TASK.

Friday 30 March 2012

Evaluation: Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?
(picture off emily)


We portrayed Emilys characters to be a young teenager from a lower/middle class blackground 



Evaluation: Question 1

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 
( picture off dead body on floor) 


Narrative 
In our thriller opening we used many conventions. This image shows Death which is common in most thrillers we showed this image to then create questions about what was happening? who was this person? why is she dead? We also created a problem for the audience to identify. These are all conventions off a thriller to entice and interest our audience. 


(picture off Emily writing letter)


Character 
The opening to our thriller shows an insight into the thoughts and feelings of Emily as we have included an emotional voice over and images off her looking vulnerable. We portray Emily as a flawed hero as we show that she is suicidal. We chose to use this convention in our opening to show that there is a problem and she feels she has no other way out and she is using an extreme way off dealing with a situation, this then portrays the situation be very serious.


(image off the fonts and titles)


Fonts and Titles.  
We used unconventional fonts and titles in our thriller opening but the reason we used this was linked to the handwriting off our letter. Normally thrillers use dark, sharp and ridged fonts which we didn't think would link in to our opening. 


(picture off the forest)


Location
Our opening develops the conventions off a thriller in the following ways, we chose to not go down the route off a traditional off a showing a murdered in a dark house for example. Our location is still conventional in the way off it being scary and in desolated forest. The unconventional parts off our opening are the bathroom scenes off showing domestic and a clean tidy bathroom. 


Techniques used
In our opening we developed our piece by using different techniques to emphasize and make the opening more effective. Effects we used were black and white and a very high contrast to make the flashback scenes stand out in our piece and we found it looked spookier.  

annotated final


this is our final piece with annotations on it :)

Tuesday 27 March 2012

Eloise Evaluation


In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 
Narrative 
flashbacks - conventional
death - conventional 
Questions - conventional

Character thriller 
Victims - eloise yasz
flawed heros - emily suicide

Techniques 
- flashbacks - black & white 
close up (eyes) show emotions etc

Locations - woods deserted = scary CONVENTIONAL 
Bathroom domestic - not conventional 
slow melange 

titles font conventions 
handwriting links to emily letter unconventional 

Tuesday 20 March 2012

evaluation -Yasz Webb

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

Conventions of a Thriller Genre

At the beginning i looked at Thriller films and analysed the use of mise-en-scene, editing, sound and camera work. this then allowed me to understand the conventions of the thriller of real media products. when we first started out we looked at toher thrillers that are out there at the moment and we were very influenced by Hitchcock's Psycho and Seven
most thrillers have the credits done over a black screen with some non-diegetic music playing black ground which sets the scene, but our opening has our credits done over the opening so you can watch while seeing the film and it has a voice over to tie it all together, also in some thrillers there is something important or vital to the film such as in The Terminator 2, our film does do that, we hve the titles "before the end" after emily has committed suicide nd after all our credits,
at the beginning of some thrillers there is a tracking or panning shot particularly the location of the film, our film has a panning shot in our second clip, it pans round to seeing emily writing her suicide letter to her parents, this is unconventional because we filmed a pan in a small room and have the protagonist in it.


In our thriller we concentrated on a subgenre which was the crime thriller, where the main plot was based around violence and death and suicide. We used this as crime can be easily related to by most people, if not, it is interesting to see what happens, We wanted to create a lot of tension and suspense in our thriller because we think that it is vital in a thriller. This was done by using a forest as one of the location, although the film wasnt all filmed in the forest, when it was, we filmed in a very small corner with very few trees.

How does you media product represent particular social groups?


we carried out research and we found that teenagers and young adults were the man target group for thrillers and were the most people who watched them, we chose to have our antagonist as a female character mainly because it challenges the stereotypical idea that antagonist are usually men mainly because men are associated with strength. we focused on both the main characters as we wanted female victim appearing vulnerable and weak, whereas the anatagonist appearing as threatening, so we kept the anatagonist identity anonymous to begin with. we used a young gilr to attract our target audience because other young people who see it can associate with the character. we try to keep it as realistic as we can through using two character of the same race, same age and of the same gender 


what kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?


Our film is very low-budget, made by students and is unlikely to be produced by any big companies because it doesnt have quality cinematography. if we had it produced professionally it would most probably be produced by television broadcaster such as channel 4. if our product was distributed as a TV movie it could then reach the target audience because that is what they mainly watch, Channel 4 also has T4, T4 is aimed at teenagers which would suit our target auidence. this channel has already previously produced thriller films such as 'Dead set' which was hugely popular and the show wasnt a huge cost to produce our film is very similar to dead set so would be perfect to be produced by the same company. our film also has a hint of "skins" in it so maybe Channel 4's other channel E4 would be just as perfect because they have tv shows like the inbetweeners and other programmes and TV films aimed at our target audience.



 Who would be the audience for your media product?


Audience research 


to find out what sort of audience our film would target i looked at previous films that are like ours such as '4.3.2.1' i went on to http://business.pearlanddean.com/ and searched 4.3.2.1 and it came up with data of what ages went to see the film. 
from looking at this print screen there where a lot of people in our target audience age group that went to see the film (15-24) and our film is very similar to this film,


our film is going to be a 15 certificate, i think it should be a 15 becuse of language, violence and sexual scences, i think our main auidence will be mixed gender between 15 and 25 becuase it is action packed and very "jumpy"


How did you attract your target audience?





What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I realised it was much easier to edit our footage if it was good quality filming from our first task, so next time I recorded several times of each shot to achieve a smooth move/correct angle. In some cases, a shot still had a fault, so we used the technology to fix that. final cut allowed us to crop shots to a shorter length so jolty movements could be removed. While having very little experience in Photoshop and never before using final cut or garage band, I had to learn all the skills needed from my peers who had used these programs before. As media has been a new subject for me, it was important to practice using a video camera, and other aspects of filming such as the language, angles and types of shots before I even considered editing. I also learnt how to correctly and efficiently upload the videos in order to start editing, 


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

I progressed on many different levels since my preliminary task.Our group were all new to these skills so we tried shared responsibilities in different areas that we performed better than our peers in to the end product was the best quality we could achieve. I felt confident enough to manage using the camera to shoot specific scenes on my own when the other members couldn’t make it.I developed far from when I made my first task as I couldn’t even focus the camera to start with, I gained skills in camera control, full understanding of angles and lengths of shots as well as editing software When it came to filming the thriller opening, I had gained a little experience and had pre-planned what i was going to shoot before, Certain members of my group were better at tasks such as keeping the camera steady when shooting, and cutting the shot to a specific time. I realised I’m better as the creative side such as experimenting with sounds, editing colour of shots and ordering them to suit the best sequences.Learning these skills were important so I could pan smoothly, focus correctly, use affective angles and position shots while learning important rules such as the 180 degree rule you can’t break while filming. As my confidence grew in handling the camera, next I focused on effects in editing, as this area I wasn’t performing well in. I was taught colour and contrast levels, as well as how to add titles. I learnt a lot a performed these skills with care.