Evaluation - Brett Cooper

Media Evaluation

1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of media products?

The film that we created is a Horror and its sub genre is a Psychological Horror we put it in this sub genre because after creating the story one of our key elements was to make it that the audience didn’t know if the ‘Stalker’ was a real person or in the characters head. This is shown in the final scene when we have a shot of the Stalker following the characters into the woods, we have a long shot showing the walk to the entrance of the woods but however by using a four way garbage matte we were able to make the stalker come in and out of shot so he looked like he was jumping time and becoming closer to his victims. This is giving him some human features and some unrealistic features. This all puts our film in the Horror genre. Before making our film we looked at many horror films to get some idea of how to film it and what styles to film it in, the film that mostly relates to ours is ‘The Strangers’ and the director of this film also gave little away to whether the characters were real in that film and he did that by having them wear mask which our character does too. This I believe is a very important element because it dehumanises a person because they lose their human features.

The films that relate to our film that we have looked at are:

· The Strangers

· It

· Scream

· Copycat

· The Eye

When I analyzed The Strangers opening sequence it is very much similar to ours because they give as less away as possible but at the same time it lets the viewer now what type of film it is. Also the sequence is very dark like ours which shows again that this is a horror movie and both ours and the films we looked at don’t give much away about the film.

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

In our film males dominate the film because we have a very masculine character which is our stalker and nobody crosses him. As appose to age there is not much difference in age between the characters in the film. However we are unable to identify how old the stalker actually is because he has a mask on and is not baring any flesh. By having a very male dominated style in our film we link it into our target audience because they even though it is aimed at both males and females when we have looked at Horror films they dominant character is usually male.

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

I believe that our film could be produced by a major Hollywood Studio because many Horror films that have been produced over the years are all depend on what the public fear at that time, for example back in the 80’s it was all about aliens. However now it is a lot to do with psychological thoughts, so we followed that pattern and I believe that with a good backing our film could become a major blockbuster. I believe this because even though we were unable to show it in the opening two minutes we created our stalker character to make people unsure if he is a person or not human at all, we did this to give people a false sense of security and for people watching they would find it interesting because one minute they would think they knew what was scripted to happen but then there would be another twist in the tale. Also even though we have said that The Strangers is very much like our film this is only because of their inclusion of clown masks, our film is very unique and could add something different to the film industry.

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

Our target audience is 15 – 40 year olds when we decided what our target audience was going to be we began to look at events in the film that we could create that would appeal to this audience so this is why the girls are heading for the woods to a party because it is something that especially our younger end of our target audience will be doing so they can relate this to their everyday life. All the films that we looked at relate to the same target audience because Horror films have a very wide age audience but it comes down to the person if they like the genre of film. The films that we look at with the same target audience were:

· The Strangers

· It

· Scream

· Copycat

· The Eye

The classification criteria that I would give our film is a 15 and that is because it does not have any sexual scenes or many gory scenes but the film been a very psychological film I wouldn’t advice people under 15 to see this film and that why I am giving it a 15 certificate.

5. How did you attract your audience?

To attract our audience we tried to make the a film that people would watch and try to work out what is to come and why the guy is doing what he is, but then just as they have worked it out there would be a twist in the tale. We wanted to do this because it makes the film more interesting and people have to think deeply about the events to pick up clues. Also we had to create a fear for the stalker character in the film because it is a Horror we need the character to be feared when he is on shot so to do this we used the camera shots to determine what feel the audience would get from him. So we us ed a lot of low angle shots and point of view shots to create this fear, also if we were to film him from the front we tried to show a less as we could of his face to again make the audience work out what he actually is.

after the production of our film four people analyised this and we filmed them as they spoke about our film a few of the comments that were passed were 'I like the text that was used in the titles' 'i like the clown character' below is a link to the video on youtube and you can see the four people reviewing our film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcTtvQNDvUA

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

Throughout conducting the film technology has been a big factor of making the whole process a lot longer if the technology for editing would have been better and faster the whole process would have been better and gave us more time to be able to create a better look for the film. Also because most of our filming was outside and we began film at the end of winter there was lots of rain around and stopped us filming on certain days. We were able to use a good quality camera ‘Dv1000’ which really helped enhanced our film but however this camera could have gave us the opportunity to film in HD and I would have like to have done so. We did face one major problem towards the end and that was that the title sequence that we had filmed was out of focus and couldn’t be resolved so we had to film the sequence again but even though it caused us some time issues it turned out to be a better title sequence.

After using the editing software I have learnt how to edit two shots together when we first started but however by the time we got to the last shots of the film we used a very good effect called ‘4 way garbage matte’ this enabled us to create two shots into one making our stalker look like he was following two characters in the film when actually they were filmed in different shots. To use these effects we used Final Cut Express on the Apple Macs.

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

When we filmed our preliminary task we didn’t really plan all the shots and storyboard everything like we have for the main project and it showed because we didn’t get as good standard as we could have done but however without doing this task we wouldn’t have been as good for our main task. Having the shot lists and storyboards when we were on set for the main task enabled us to film straight away without spending valuable time discussing where we needed to shoot from especially when we were wanting to film at dusk and we were constantly loosing light. My specific shot types have improved because I can identify what type of shot we need when trying to create a mood atmosphere and feelings for a person. Also after this task I feel very confident with the equipment and would like to do more in the future. Our end product is exactly what we set out to achieve and I am very happy with it and believe it meets the requirements to the task.