Evaluation

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

When we were planning our film we decided that our film should challenge the conventions of horror films. After analysing horror films such as: Halloween, we saw that the female in the film is always seen as the victim and there is never really a female playing the role of the ‘monster’. Therefore in our film we challenged this convention by making the zombie (the main antagonist) be played by a female. Also, stereotypical in horror films the male in a couple is the one to lead the way into such places as forest’s, abandoned houses etc, yet again we decided to challenge this convention by making the female protagonist leave her boyfriend and lead the way into the forest. For the titles we used the colour red to symbolise blood and danger, the audience therefore knows its a horror film due to the use of this colour for the titles, this is conventional to be seen in horror films. We used eerie background music for the opening which gradually built up to build up tension for the viewer, then the music climax’s with thuds when the name of the film appears. The use of eerie music is conventional for a typical horror film. A lot of gore was used for our opening sequence when the zombie is seen to be eating the dead person; gore and blood is a very common site to see in a horror film as it’s a convention of the genre. 

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

The characters which are used in our product are all white working class, teenagers. Most horror films have characters who are working/middle class teenagers such as in: Friday the 13th, Nightmare of Elm Street etc, we follow this convention is ours. Although in horror films the zombies or monsters are usually adult, in our product the zombie is a teenager which is rare to see and therefore unconventional. Also, we made the female character be the stronger character and not the ‘damsel in distress’, as the lead protagonist is female and she manages to escape from the zombie, whereas the boyfriend was the first one to get caught and seen as the weaker character, making the female be seen as the more dominant gender, which is unconventional for horrors although in such films as: Scream the leading female is the one who manages to survive just like in our film. 

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

Our production ‘The Infestation’ would most likely be produced by companies that mainly produce horror films such as: Hammer. Hammer Film Productions is a film production company based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of gothic "Hammer Horror" films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Another Studio which might distribute our film is: New Line Cinema. A Nightmare on Elm Street was produced and released by New Line in 1984 and has became one of the best known horror films. The company got its nickname from the success of the film "The House that Freddy Built". This shows that New Line Cinema produce horror films, meaning they would take an interest in our product as it’s a horror film.

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

The target audience for our media product would be young adults between the ages 18 -24. We did this due to content in our film, as it is very gory the certification for it would have to 18, meaning our audience would have to be 18 or older to see the film legally. Its targeted at any gender as we saw that from the survey results both males and females enjoyed watching horror films, although it could be seen to have a slight female targeted audience as the main antagonist and protagonist are both females, meaning woman are more likely to be interested in watching the film as they can ‘relate’ to them even though stereotypically horror films are watched predominately by a male audience. This is not targeted at any certain ethnicity. The main audience watching this would be of working class, as the characters in the film are working class, yet again making the audience be able to relate to the characters, also because mainly working class people go to the cinema on weekends etc.  

5. How did you attract/address your audience? 

We tried to attract our audience by having a tension filled/gripping storyline. Within the first the first few minutes the zombie was there and then it had suddenly disappeared! Also, we used music which would build up tension to attract the audience as we want them to stay gripped throughout it. As well, we used relatable characters: your ‘average’ teenagers, this attracts our target audience because some of the issues the characters have the audience might have themselves. In terms of marketing and advertising we would use pop-ups, as many teenagers and young adults use to internet regularly, therefore they would see these pop-ups and be attracted to the film. We would also release a set of teaser trailers to get potential audience members watching snippets of the film, so they could get a taste for what the actual film is going to be like. We wouldn’t just use viral marketing thought we would also use traditional marketing such as: billboards, posters in magazines and newspapers etc. TV adverts would be a definite for the marketing as basically every home has a TV, this would bring about a potential wider audience as people would be able to see the trailers and so on. 

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

I have learnt how to carry out basic shot and camera movements using a mini DV camera and tripod, which I used these new skills when filming our product. Also when shooting we used a touch screen version of this camera, so I learnt how to use the touch screen technology on it. For using the camera I also learnt panning, tilting, match on action and how to frame a shot correctly through completing the preliminary task.

Went it came to editing I learnt how to use FinalCut Pro; this was the first time I had used this computer program. From using FinalCut Pro I have learnt how to: drag/drop, put transitions between shots, render, how to put the text on, overlap different shots, speed shots up, slow shots down and to insert sound clips/music.

Finally I learnt how to create blogs on the website: www.blogger.com. Learning how to work this website allowed me to easily plan my ideas and put all my research into one document which all my team members could access through the internet. I learnt how to set up blogs, add posts, and embed images and videos.

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

From the preliminary task to the full product I feel I have learnt quite a bit. The preliminary task allowed me to learn how to use the video camera e.g: how to put the tape in correctly, how to zoom in and out etc. I learnt how to frame different shots and angles. The task we had to do for the preliminary task was to film a scene where we include match on action, from this I learnt about match on action and how the 180 degree rules works and how not to break it. Also it taught me how to film shot reverse shot and to get the eye line in the correct position.

When it came to the final piece I was able to use these skills learnt from the preliminary task and use them when filming. As I had now learnt how to use a camera at a basic level, I was now able to explore with it more when filming the final product by using hand held camera work, horizontal tracking and different panning styles. As we could now experiment with different camera angles, I learnt how to carry out a POV shot effectively among other different camera movements.  

My skills of working in a group improved from the preliminary task to the full product, as I learnt how to cooperate more with the individuals working on set and in my group by learning to listen to their ideas and expand upon them, as well as discussing things which we thought would not work without offending anyone’s opinions.

Overall I learnt a lot from mistakes I made during the preliminary experiment and when filming the actual product to improve on these mistakes to get the best possible results. I applied all knowledge learnt from the preliminary experiment and developed this knowledge when filming the final piece.