Final Project - Evaluation

How does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products and how does your media project represent particular social groups?

Our production was heavily based upon films we ourselves as a group watched during our initial research. We did this so we could know the codes and conventions of the horror genre and what they involve. A convention of the genre we used was hiding the face of the main character, the killer. The way in which we hid the killers face throughout the opening scene emphasises the mystery which would be in our film. With not showing the audience the face of the character it leaves them guessing themselves who it could be and create a character themselves. In our research Craig found that se7en done this in the opening scene. In clip of se7en Craig found that they used a lot of fast paced close-up shots. When I was doing my initial research I analysed the opening from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, when I was looking through this clip I realised that different images of a young boys face was being covered by either his hands or his mothers. The focus of the cannibal in our film continues to apply to the genre in that it is commonly used in psychological horrors. The use of effects which have fragmented our breaking up of our film making it seem uncertain boosted this enigma of horror, being a killer which has led him to life of a cannibal. The music we used was to create the tension in the film the music was speeding up and up the further we went into the killers lives. We perfected the music so the “kick-off” point of the clip worked in with when my character closed the door. This again connotes the mystery the audience will feel, they will be asking questions like, why is he in her house? What is he going to do to her? Does she know him? Is she still alive?
As a whole we weren’t really intending on representing a particular social group as whole because our final project did not include a lot of characters. Also we didn’t show the face of the main character which meant we couldn’t represent him as a whole. The idea that everyone can have a dark side to them that they are scared of could be presented as a group. That they choose to keep their dark side from the public and yet it is still present. For the people who actually embrace this side of themselves we show them to be manipulative and extremely twisted in many ways and the way that they go about their lives leading them to fulfil these heinous aspirations. They way in which the killer is lewt into the womans house at the end could show that he has talked his way into it but could imply that he looks “normal” and that he can be trusted. On a much wider scale a representation of gender can be presented, that women are always the victims, there are a total of two victims in our project and both are portrayed as innocent women. It implies that the women have no power over what is about to happen or what is going to happen to them.


Who would be the audience of your media product?

When I started my initial research after deciding the genre of the product I looked a the target audience for horrors. I found that the audience for horror films are mainly interested for the thrills and the adrenaline rush from being so close to fear. They love the feeling of being so close to the edge of fear that they’re so scared they don’t want to watch but can’t take their eyes away. The age demographic is usually teenagers and younger adults. We used films like Hannibal and The Texas chainsaw massacre as inspiration for this. Generally the audience of our piece will be male, and will be between 18-26 years old. The audience be predominantly male as the horror genre being stereotypically aimed at the male population, there will be a nique in the market whereby for women who do enjoy the horror genre just as much as the males. This makes it so that they can watch a horror film and be frightened by it but with their attitude towards life it will not terrify them into never wanting to see it again, the type of person who would enjoy the blood and gore and will want to see it again. The people who would enjoy our film will be the people who have seen and enjoyed films like, Seven, Silence of the Lambs, Saw, Omen and Paranormal Activity. These films include blood but not so much that will terrify and haunt their audience we have taken this into account for our project. The audience will enjoy the fact that they don’t know what is happening they will like the mystery involved in it, they being kept on the edge of their seat.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product?

The best choice of distributer we felt would be Lionsgate. Lionsgate are known for their distribution of the lower budget film productions and the relevance to our genre, the distribution of higher certificate horror films, we feel that ours would be a high certificate. Lionsgate are famous for distributing very popular psychological films such as Saw which is linked to the Twisted Pictures brand which is also distributed by Lionsgate. Lionsgate seemed like an obvious and appropriate choice as a distributer to our film, we feel that Lionsgate would be intrested in our film because of the genre we have chosen. Also because in the past they have distributed films very similar to our with the same classification we think ours would need and achieve.

How did you attract/address the audience?

To attract our particular audience, we felt that the type of person of whom would watch our film would instantly be attracted. The way in which we have incorporated the mystery into the horror genre will have the audience immediately hooked. We decided to let the audience make the judgement for themselves about the hidden character, we thought that the audience would be hooked into the film more if they didn’t know what was happening that they had to guess who this person is and what he is going to do, this connects with the codes and conventions of the horror genre. This kind of thing is that attracts the certain audience to our film, this element of mystery allows them to become part of the film, them seeing what is going on but not being told even at the end. The audience we feel will watch this we feel will attract them instantly, its no gory and full of blood for a reason. We want our audience to be freaked out by it all but not to an extent that they can’t watch it again.

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

While editing our product we have realised that we should never rely on Premier Pro to work for us every time. I am saying this because on many occasions we have had the programme crash and freeze on us and have lost our work once or twice. Even though we are happy with the work we have completed for this product, the stress of using Premier Pro annoyed our group and also our peers many times. A lot of the time it was things we could not control. For instance once we left our video rendering over lunch and we thought it would be completed for us to save when we got back but someone had removed our sign we wrote saying “do not touch” and logged off the computer. This meant we lost the work we had done and someone had messed with our work. One afternoon Craig and I went on the computer to export the rough cut, Premier Pro crashed on us for about 4 times. However a thank you has to go to Mr Earl, who made the process of completeing our project on time easier. He converted our files to a DV format and re-uploaded them onto the media server, when we used the lower quality files on Premier Pro we found that the programme ran smoothly and much quicker than it had ever been. With this being done it meant we could make progress with our project. We found that rendering took about half an hour opposed to the four hours it would have usually taken, once it had taken 6 hours. Overall we learned that it is best to convert the footage to a DV format before editing something on a larger scale being that it loads quicker and runs quicker making the editing process a lot quicker, this helps reaching deadlines.

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

Our preliminary task which was ironically the continuity task was an eye opening experience. Despite it being the continuity project we found that our project had a lot of flaws. I blame a few things because of this, I think the biggest problem was team work in my group. I found that the day everyone else on my group could film I couldn’t so I said that if they filmed I would do the majority of the editing with help from the rest of the group. However I found that there was no teamwork whatsoever in my group they left me to complete the project, I stayed in when I had free periods and on lunch times. I thought that after doing this that they would be grateful but they just complained about the editing once I had spent to much time on it and little did they. For this reason I know I had to leave this group and move into a group whom I knew would be reliable and understanding. I feel that this is the best decision that I could have made and I am very happy with my decision, I have no flaws in my group and we have gelled together well.
This time in our final project our group decided to plan based on our past experiences. In our preliminary task I can remember that the rest of my group did not film as much as they should of, we should of filmed the same angles time and time again just incase something went wrong. This time round we filmed more than we needed to which meant that the times we found continuity errors in our footage we had other clips we could use. This happened on 2 occasions in which we were very grateful for. I know that the rest of my group when they done their preliminary task they filmed at night which meant the footage wasn’t clear enough so they decided we would film in the daytime. We made sure we knew what we were filming the day before so we could get it done quickly before it became darker. We realised just how clear it was when filming at the right time of day, we dimmed the outside footage to make the footage eerie but we did not lose any of the quality. Overall i would say that over the year of as media we have picked up tips that saved us from some tricky situations when we almost lost our work but we found that the tasks before our final piece helped us with preparing us for our final project.