Evaluation
Introduction- For our AS media coursework we had to create an openeing sequence to a new film. We decided to create a hybrid opening sequence because we thought it would increase our audience numbers because the different genres that we incorporated into are media text will appeal to more people. Our film was about a girl who is not human seeking revenge on her ex-boyfriend when she sees him with another girl. I worked in a group with three other people; Steph Bolton, Katherine Whittaker and Danielle O'Hara. Within the group we all had different roles, my role was filming some of the fottage and then editting our final project to our aspired opening sequence.
Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The genre of our media text is a horror, revenge, sci-fi thriller and we have followed some of the most typical conventions of this genre. The first convention that we considered was the genre and what conventions certain genres followed. By looking into different types of thrillers, there were many conventions for each sub-genre. By looking at these, we tried to in-corporate conventions from different sub-genres into our media project. It was vital for us to use typical elements because it helps the audience relate to the opening sequence and it will encourage them to keep watching because even though we used typical conventions we broke them as well so that the audience did not know what was going to happen and therefore they will keep watching to find out. The conventions that we did not follow for this genre was that the victim in the opening sequence was a male where as in typical media texts the victim is a girl as they are seen as the weaker gender. We took the typical conventions for each sub-genre and combined them together so that the audience was able to relate to the media text as a whole. I believe that once we had combined all of the conventions it would be successful because I think that our target audience would be able to recognise the conventions and get “hooked” onto the film making them eager to watch more. We also created enigmas for the audience by making the media text mysterious for example the very first shot was a girl emerging from a lake, this would confuse the audience at first but it would also make them question themselves because they do not understand what and why this is happening. We also created other enigmas because we wanted the audience to think about the film rather than them being able to guess what they think would happen. Some sci-fi films that inspired us were Terminator and a revenge thriller that inspired us were kill bill and when a stranger calls, these inspired us because they follwed typical conventions and they are also very good at keeping the audience in suspense by creating enigmas. Also most thrillers leave events on cliffhangers so that the audience would question what will happen next, and this is what we aimed to do at the end of our opening sequence by just having the protagonist knocking on the door so the audience would wonder what is going to happen next. When we researched what the most common genres were, we found out that horror genres are quite popular and we decided to use the sub-genres which were most popular so that our media text would appeal to our target audience. Another main convention of the thriller genre is the type of camera shots and angles used such as the point of view shot which we incorporated into our media text in order to make the audience feel like they were the character. The setting played a big part in our media text because in thrillers the setting is usually a dark, secretive place which is why we chose to use the woods which seemed eerie and matched what we wanted to put across to the audience which was, it was a dark place where dark things could happen such as the strange girl emerging from the lake. The music that we used was an omnious track and created a sinister effect which would make the audience think that something out of the ordinary was going to happen. The lighting throughout also matched the thriller genre because we used either natural lighting or low-key lighting to create the sense of mystery, we juxtaposed this with the lighting in the house that we filmed in whihc was full of colours such as reds and oranges which shows the contast between the "safe" and the "danger".
This is a location shot of one of the locations that we used for our media text. This contributed to the conventions because typically in thrillers the setting is usually dark and mysterious and we believed that this location fit the convention very well.
Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
In our media text we did not focus on one particular social group or stereotype but we did show a typical teen couple, and we showed this by making the characters sit closely together, kiss and cuddle, the male also give the female character a present. The clothes worn were typical clothes that a teen would were and this was a casual dress. We did not follow the typical convention by making the female the most dominant character which is unusual because women are mostly seen as the weaker gender in the “real world.” The stereotype we followed for this was the monster/zombie. We did this by making the female character dress in dirty white night dress like she had come from a strange place; also by her actions and her appearance the audience would be able to recognise that this character was in fact not a “normal” person. Typically thrillers would dress their villians in black to show that they were the evil one but we went against this idea and dressed her in white which usually has connotations of innocence and purity The facial features of this character also made her seem surreal because she was upset distressed and she did not look like a teenage girl should look, we also made her eyes red to make sure the audience knew she wasn’t a human. Another stereotype that we tried to incorporate in our media text was the setting, we tried to choose and omnious setting such as the woods which would make it clearer to the audience that what we were trying to get across was not a romance film but because of the setting they were able to recognise that it was somewhat of a thriller film. We also tried to add to the conventions by using certain facial expressions, the teengae couple seemed happy whereas the "cyborg" seemed distressed and upset and we can tell this by her smudged make-up and her clothing. She was wearing a white dress which usually connotates innocence and purity but this girl is far from innocent and we made a contrast between the colour of her dress and her make-up which implied to the audience that there is more than what meets the eye.
This is a typical teenage couple which we tried to portray by their body language and making them close to each other.
Q3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?We decided to use the film company Cipher and Stealth pictures http://www.stealthfilms.co.uk/ because we had researched this and it seemed like the most appropriate company to follow as we wanted to create a British independent film and be able to reject some of the typical horror conventions. By researching this we found out that Cipher and Stealth pictures made films such as Kidulthood and Adulthood which were popular films in Britain, even though these films are not thrillers we thought it was an appropriate example to use and they represent stereotypes really well and they also break typical conventions of the genre that they follow. Also in these films the film company broke some of the conventions and created films which the audience would not expect. They create films on a low (3-5 million) which means they cannot incorporate as much CGI and special effects as films which are produced by Hollywood could. Also the actors in these types of films are not as well known as they cannot afford “big stars.” This is because the Hollywood films have a much bigger budget as they are broadcast more than British films and therefore are able to make more money. British films show the realism of life more and this is what we wanted to show, even though we had a character which was not human in our film we created a sense of realism with the other characters. We also used simple settings as this is what Cipher and Stealth Pictures would use, even though the settings we used were quite simple I believe that they worked well with our opening sequence, the settings we used were; a house; woods; brook. We chose the woods and the brook because they were isolated and we thought this would work well with the image we were trying to create. We also followed the British institution by making our plot seem complex so that the audience are interested as they do not know what the outcome of the media text will be.
This is a preview of the film Kidulthood made my Cipher and Stealth Pictures. We are able to recognise that this is a British film because the actors are not a-list as we do not recognise them and also the setting is not as "glossy" as it would be in a film such as a Hollywood film. Finally this scene also shows realism and what happens in some peoples everyday life. This film was aimed towards teens and we can tell this because the actors are teens and some of it is set in a school and therefore teens would be able to relate to the characters more.
Q4. Who would be the audience for your media product? & Q5. How did you attract/ address your audience?
We researched what age group of people would most enjoy our film and we found out that the most popular age group for our type of film would be 16-25 and this is because they would be able to relate to the film more than others. This is also the reason why we used teens for our characters because we believe that the audience would relate to the characters which are most like them and due to the age group of our target audience the ages of the characters seemed to work. We believe that our media text is aimed towards any ethnicity and nationality because most people would enjoy it we also have not aimed towards a specific gender as we think that both genders would enjoy it. But we think that females would enjoy the media as the protagonist is a female rather than a male but when we researched the genre we discovered that it was males were the most common gender who enjoyed the sci-fi thriller genre. The socio-economic status’ that we aimed towards was A-E and this is because these are the most likely people who will watch the film. We determined all of these factors by researching and using GRASS. We also used Maslow’s hierarchy to determine whether the opening sequence would interest the people it is aimed towards. We think that the media texts will fulfil the needs of; family; friends and relationships because it incorporates relationships of characters and people being there for each other.
Here is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which we used to determine what needs our media text would fulfil.Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?First of all I learnt how to use a hand-held camera which was used to shoot all of our footage, i learnt how to use different features of the camera such as zooming and setting the screen to the intended view we wanted. I also learnt how to work a Mac and how to use the programme imovie which i used to edit the footage after it had filmed, in this programme i learnt how to cut certain parts of the footage and split scenes, apply text, music and transitions which were suitable to the project. I also learnt different functions on the Mac such as screen shot which is press the command key, shift and 3. This helped me as we needed a screen shot to incorporate into our opening sequence. Before we started our project I learnt about blogger and how to upload things such as videos which would help me to research the genre of the film, we accessed blooger by going to http://www.blogger.com/w.blogger.com/ which is where we posted our ideas about our media text and posted certain information which would be useful in our final media text. I have also learnt that when filming with a camera the light needs to be right because it is very hard to adjust once it has been uploaded and filmed. We also used the website http://www.dafont.co.uk/ which is a website that shows you all different types of texts which we could use when we were putting the name of the film on the media text. We chose a text that would relate to our media text like a sci-fi type font.This is like one of the cameras that we learnt how to operate:
Q7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full project?
Looking back on the preliminary task I have learnt about different camera shots and how different ones work well within the context of the film, I also believe that i have learnthow to use the hand-held camera more effectively and smoother. The biggest thing that I have learnt is about lighting and how the lighting is a key feature in perfecting the filming and how poor or good quality lighting can effect the way the media text turns out. The biggest thing that i have improved on is my editing skills, even though i had prior knowledge on how to use imove i was not fully confident about editing a project but by completing the preliminary task and becoming more aware of imovie i believe that the editing was very smooth.
Conclusion I think that overall our opening sequence went quite well and it turned out how we wanted it to. I think that the locations were perfect for the image we were trying to put across and we used them to the best of our ability. I think that the editing was smooth and made the film work really well. On the other hand there were a few mishaps, I think that if we had of had more time to complete this project we would have spent longer filming, but we could not do this due to lighting and the weather. As it went dark earlier on in the day it was hard for us to perfect the lighting as we never knew what to expect. I think that if we were to do it again we would spend more time on the lighting as in some parts of our media texts seemed too dark and this degrades the film.
These are photographs of when we were filming and we had to improvise by making our own tripod to get the height of the shot just perfect.
Introduction- For our AS media coursework we had to create an openeing sequence to a new film. We decided to create a hybrid opening sequence because we thought it would increase our audience numbers because the different genres that we incorporated into are media text will appeal to more people. Our film was about a girl who is not human seeking revenge on her ex-boyfriend when she sees him with another girl. I worked in a group with three other people; Steph Bolton, Katherine Whittaker and Danielle O'Hara. Within the group we all had different roles, my role was filming some of the fottage and then editting our final project to our aspired opening sequence.
Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The genre of our media text is a horror, revenge, sci-fi thriller and we have followed some of the most typical conventions of this genre. The first convention that we considered was the genre and what conventions certain genres followed. By looking into different types of thrillers, there were many conventions for each sub-genre. By looking at these, we tried to in-corporate conventions from different sub-genres into our media project. It was vital for us to use typical elements because it helps the audience relate to the opening sequence and it will encourage them to keep watching because even though we used typical conventions we broke them as well so that the audience did not know what was going to happen and therefore they will keep watching to find out. The conventions that we did not follow for this genre was that the victim in the opening sequence was a male where as in typical media texts the victim is a girl as they are seen as the weaker gender. We took the typical conventions for each sub-genre and combined them together so that the audience was able to relate to the media text as a whole. I believe that once we had combined all of the conventions it would be successful because I think that our target audience would be able to recognise the conventions and get “hooked” onto the film making them eager to watch more. We also created enigmas for the audience by making the media text mysterious for example the very first shot was a girl emerging from a lake, this would confuse the audience at first but it would also make them question themselves because they do not understand what and why this is happening. We also created other enigmas because we wanted the audience to think about the film rather than them being able to guess what they think would happen. Some sci-fi films that inspired us were Terminator and a revenge thriller that inspired us were kill bill and when a stranger calls, these inspired us because they follwed typical conventions and they are also very good at keeping the audience in suspense by creating enigmas. Also most thrillers leave events on cliffhangers so that the audience would question what will happen next, and this is what we aimed to do at the end of our opening sequence by just having the protagonist knocking on the door so the audience would wonder what is going to happen next. When we researched what the most common genres were, we found out that horror genres are quite popular and we decided to use the sub-genres which were most popular so that our media text would appeal to our target audience. Another main convention of the thriller genre is the type of camera shots and angles used such as the point of view shot which we incorporated into our media text in order to make the audience feel like they were the character. The setting played a big part in our media text because in thrillers the setting is usually a dark, secretive place which is why we chose to use the woods which seemed eerie and matched what we wanted to put across to the audience which was, it was a dark place where dark things could happen such as the strange girl emerging from the lake. The music that we used was an omnious track and created a sinister effect which would make the audience think that something out of the ordinary was going to happen. The lighting throughout also matched the thriller genre because we used either natural lighting or low-key lighting to create the sense of mystery, we juxtaposed this with the lighting in the house that we filmed in whihc was full of colours such as reds and oranges which shows the contast between the "safe" and the "danger".
This is a location shot of one of the locations that we used for our media text. This contributed to the conventions because typically in thrillers the setting is usually dark and mysterious and we believed that this location fit the convention very well.
Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
In our media text we did not focus on one particular social group or stereotype but we did show a typical teen couple, and we showed this by making the characters sit closely together, kiss and cuddle, the male also give the female character a present. The clothes worn were typical clothes that a teen would were and this was a casual dress. We did not follow the typical convention by making the female the most dominant character which is unusual because women are mostly seen as the weaker gender in the “real world.” The stereotype we followed for this was the monster/zombie. We did this by making the female character dress in dirty white night dress like she had come from a strange place; also by her actions and her appearance the audience would be able to recognise that this character was in fact not a “normal” person. Typically thrillers would dress their villians in black to show that they were the evil one but we went against this idea and dressed her in white which usually has connotations of innocence and purity The facial features of this character also made her seem surreal because she was upset distressed and she did not look like a teenage girl should look, we also made her eyes red to make sure the audience knew she wasn’t a human. Another stereotype that we tried to incorporate in our media text was the setting, we tried to choose and omnious setting such as the woods which would make it clearer to the audience that what we were trying to get across was not a romance film but because of the setting they were able to recognise that it was somewhat of a thriller film. We also tried to add to the conventions by using certain facial expressions, the teengae couple seemed happy whereas the "cyborg" seemed distressed and upset and we can tell this by her smudged make-up and her clothing. She was wearing a white dress which usually connotates innocence and purity but this girl is far from innocent and we made a contrast between the colour of her dress and her make-up which implied to the audience that there is more than what meets the eye.
This is a typical teenage couple which we tried to portray by their body language and making them close to each other.Q3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?We decided to use the film company Cipher and Stealth pictures http://www.stealthfilms.co.uk/ because we had researched this and it seemed like the most appropriate company to follow as we wanted to create a British independent film and be able to reject some of the typical horror conventions. By researching this we found out that Cipher and Stealth pictures made films such as Kidulthood and Adulthood which were popular films in Britain, even though these films are not thrillers we thought it was an appropriate example to use and they represent stereotypes really well and they also break typical conventions of the genre that they follow. Also in these films the film company broke some of the conventions and created films which the audience would not expect. They create films on a low (3-5 million) which means they cannot incorporate as much CGI and special effects as films which are produced by Hollywood could. Also the actors in these types of films are not as well known as they cannot afford “big stars.” This is because the Hollywood films have a much bigger budget as they are broadcast more than British films and therefore are able to make more money. British films show the realism of life more and this is what we wanted to show, even though we had a character which was not human in our film we created a sense of realism with the other characters. We also used simple settings as this is what Cipher and Stealth Pictures would use, even though the settings we used were quite simple I believe that they worked well with our opening sequence, the settings we used were; a house; woods; brook. We chose the woods and the brook because they were isolated and we thought this would work well with the image we were trying to create. We also followed the British institution by making our plot seem complex so that the audience are interested as they do not know what the outcome of the media text will be.
This is a preview of the film Kidulthood made my Cipher and Stealth Pictures. We are able to recognise that this is a British film because the actors are not a-list as we do not recognise them and also the setting is not as "glossy" as it would be in a film such as a Hollywood film. Finally this scene also shows realism and what happens in some peoples everyday life. This film was aimed towards teens and we can tell this because the actors are teens and some of it is set in a school and therefore teens would be able to relate to the characters more.
Q4. Who would be the audience for your media product? & Q5. How did you attract/ address your audience?
We researched what age group of people would most enjoy our film and we found out that the most popular age group for our type of film would be 16-25 and this is because they would be able to relate to the film more than others. This is also the reason why we used teens for our characters because we believe that the audience would relate to the characters which are most like them and due to the age group of our target audience the ages of the characters seemed to work. We believe that our media text is aimed towards any ethnicity and nationality because most people would enjoy it we also have not aimed towards a specific gender as we think that both genders would enjoy it. But we think that females would enjoy the media as the protagonist is a female rather than a male but when we researched the genre we discovered that it was males were the most common gender who enjoyed the sci-fi thriller genre. The socio-economic status’ that we aimed towards was A-E and this is because these are the most likely people who will watch the film. We determined all of these factors by researching and using GRASS. We also used Maslow’s hierarchy to determine whether the opening sequence would interest the people it is aimed towards. We think that the media texts will fulfil the needs of; family; friends and relationships because it incorporates relationships of characters and people being there for each other.
Here is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which we used to determine what needs our media text would fulfil.Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?First of all I learnt how to use a hand-held camera which was used to shoot all of our footage, i learnt how to use different features of the camera such as zooming and setting the screen to the intended view we wanted. I also learnt how to work a Mac and how to use the programme imovie which i used to edit the footage after it had filmed, in this programme i learnt how to cut certain parts of the footage and split scenes, apply text, music and transitions which were suitable to the project. I also learnt different functions on the Mac such as screen shot which is press the command key, shift and 3. This helped me as we needed a screen shot to incorporate into our opening sequence. Before we started our project I learnt about blogger and how to upload things such as videos which would help me to research the genre of the film, we accessed blooger by going to http://www.blogger.com/w.blogger.com/ which is where we posted our ideas about our media text and posted certain information which would be useful in our final media text. I have also learnt that when filming with a camera the light needs to be right because it is very hard to adjust once it has been uploaded and filmed. We also used the website http://www.dafont.co.uk/ which is a website that shows you all different types of texts which we could use when we were putting the name of the film on the media text. We chose a text that would relate to our media text like a sci-fi type font.This is like one of the cameras that we learnt how to operate:
Q7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full project?
Looking back on the preliminary task I have learnt about different camera shots and how different ones work well within the context of the film, I also believe that i have learnthow to use the hand-held camera more effectively and smoother. The biggest thing that I have learnt is about lighting and how the lighting is a key feature in perfecting the filming and how poor or good quality lighting can effect the way the media text turns out. The biggest thing that i have improved on is my editing skills, even though i had prior knowledge on how to use imove i was not fully confident about editing a project but by completing the preliminary task and becoming more aware of imovie i believe that the editing was very smooth.
Conclusion I think that overall our opening sequence went quite well and it turned out how we wanted it to. I think that the locations were perfect for the image we were trying to put across and we used them to the best of our ability. I think that the editing was smooth and made the film work really well. On the other hand there were a few mishaps, I think that if we had of had more time to complete this project we would have spent longer filming, but we could not do this due to lighting and the weather. As it went dark earlier on in the day it was hard for us to perfect the lighting as we never knew what to expect. I think that if we were to do it again we would spend more time on the lighting as in some parts of our media texts seemed too dark and this degrades the film.
These are photographs of when we were filming and we had to improvise by making our own tripod to get the height of the shot just perfect.
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