Media Evaluation- Draft

Introduction

For my AS Media Practical Project, I and the members of my group created an opening sequence for a hybrid genre of physco - thriller - sci-fi. The members of my group were Katherine Whittaker, Danielle O Hara and Polly Hindle. The film itself is based on a loved up teen couple and the girl is tragically killed in a accident. Due to the grieving from her father he irrationally decides to genetically modify his daughter and in result from the process, transforms her into a jealous, veangful cyborg. Once she escapes from this genetic tragedy, she seeks to destroy her ex boyfriend and later on finds out he has moved on and has got anorther girlfriend.  
As we were a large group we all had different roles:

• Myself - Costume and Location manager and secondary camera assistant
• Polly Hindle - Editor
• Katherine Whittaker - Producer
• Danielle O Hara - Director

Gary - Secondary Actor. Spencer

Above, Myself as Rose, below

Catherine as Ebony         

Q1. In what ways does your media product use,develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media product challenges typical conventions as, generally a male is the central/ dominant character, where as we have used a female as the dominant character to show the audience she is powerful and in control. As the opening sequence was British, this made a contrast with Hollywood movies. Contrasts include:

• Locations and mise en scene - In comparison to glamorous sets, ours was Brit Gritty. For example, Football Factory. Were the locations are fairly average. Mise en scene included a normal average household, with a Christmas tree due to the fact we were filming during the Christmas period.
• Our characters are all down to earth, average people who live normal lives.

Below is an image of our house location in red lens mode to show the view of how the cyborg can witness the Mise En Scene.

The genre of our sequence is a hybrid of physco - thriller - sci- fi. We chose these typical genres and combined them with typical conventions so the audience could identify the usual aspects of horror movies, but are also captivated by alternative conventions. Our innovations are likely to be successful as our target audience and audiences in general gain pleasure and reassurance from typical conventions. In contrast they are also hooked by the continouous enigmas. For example, "Who is the girl?" "Why is she climbing out of the river?" "Why is she picking up a brick?" etc.

To the left is an image of our woods location which is where we filmed our cyborb character walking through.

 Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our media product we have represented two particular social groups. Rose is the girlfriend of Spencer who stereotypically represent the average teenage couple. This is determined by the following factors:

• Action and movement of the characters - within clips of the sequence the couple continuously hug and kiss.
• Spencer also gives Rose a necklace as a token of his appreciation for the start of their relationship.

In our clip we have used alternatives such as using a female as protagonist as an alternative to a male, as this adds an alvernative convention to the film and therefore separates it from other categories.

The second main social group is based upon Ebony. She is stereotyped as a monster/zombie as she is a veangeful cyborg. The audience can identify this by:

• She climbs out of the Lake - perhaps evil eperimentation? This provides enigmas that this speciman isn't human/or fully human.
• Her appearance - She is wearing a distressed dress which shows some amount of disturbance.
• Nearer to the ending of the sequence we see Ebony blinking and her eyes become a red, which indicated she is not human.

As the majority of our characters are average,normal human beings they dress in everyday clothing and so don't really acquire costumes in our sequence. Although we had costumes and make up involved with the character Ebony as we haad to create an effect which made her look distressed and not human. Our lighting slotted in with our British film as the lighting was natural, rather than using profesional equipement, for example Lighting rigs. All these factors combined well with the dominant mode of our representation, as the majority of our location was "common" which makes it Brit Gritty and two thirds of our characters are down to earth, common people who live average lives, alike to Kidulthood which was made with a low budget.

To the left is an image of the British Film, Kidulthood.

Q3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

At the start we all researched relevant institutions which would combine well with our initial ideas. Our beginning thought was that our genre was just going to be a thriller, until we researched the following:

Terminator

28 Days Later        
Kill Bill
Friday The 13th                         

 Opening sequence for Terminator

28 Days Later Trailer

Kill Bill Opening Sequence

Friday the 13th Trailer

Once this research was completed we realised that we'd need a combined genre and a different institution to develop from. From our research we found an institution that was British, Cypher Film.

Cypher Films Website

 We chose this as Cypher Film is more experimental with it's filming as it only has a low budget to begin with, so if a film they create doesn't turn out very well, it doesn't really loose out and also because we wanted our product to be unique. Here are some British Films we researched:

• Kidulthood
• Football Factory

Kidulthood part 1
Football Factory part 1


 Although these films didn't match with our genre, they helped us to determine British Independent Films and how they work in most cases.  We also established that a British Film can be a good quality without the big budget! (£3.5 million on average) This is in contrast with Hollywood Films which create multi million pound products as they contain A- Star celebrities and stunning SFX, were as out SFX manager was Danielle O Hara who created the red eyes on our cyborg.

Q4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Before we commenced on with planning we thought about targetting our product at the age group of 16 - 25 year olds of both genders. We initially thought of this age group as then our audience can relate to scenarios progressing on through the sequence. In my opinion the film would appeal to the British, although anyone who is a fan of our hybrid genre would also become a fan and would make the audience viewings wider. People in the economic status of A-E would appeal to this because of the expense of the cinema/ merchandise. We also used "GRASS" to help us to conclude our decision of our target audience.

* Gender

* Race

* Age

* Socio - Economic

*Status

With this we was able to establish which age groups would be able to see our product as stated above.

Anorther popular thriller for our target audience would be :

* Sorority Row

This proved popular with the target audience as the budget was $12.5 million and the gross return for it was $16,336,990, over $3 million profit!

Movie Trailer for Sorority Row

Q5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Our initial point on attracting the audience would be the fact that our genre opens many different windows for more audiences to come and view our product. Instead of including the whole narrative, we only used disruption as this creates more enigmas throughout the sequence to keep the audience hooked. This is a vital part of our sequence as without it our sequence provide any excitement or questions to follow. One of the most vital parts of our sequence would definately be the music we added to relevant parts. We did this as a warning to the audience to emphasise danger and add tension. In terms of transitions, we used continuity editing. We used this to show the rate of pace which situations was occuring as this keeps the audience hooked. Our characters appeal well to our audience as they are a typical couple who represent an everyday couple in today's  society. Enigmas are created throughout as mentioned before to keep the audience asking questions, camera angles contribute to these questions as we used a bird's - eye - view shot when Ebony is picking up a brick. This brings up the questions of why is she picking up the brick, what is she going to do with it? One aspect which interested me and kept me focused to the clip was the red filter our Director, Danielle created for our audience to see through the eyes of our cyborb. These are used with Medium shots with a straight shot angle.
As shown below, this is how we wanted our audience to see the cyborg's sight be portrated. Below is also an image of the Cyborg's eyes once in mode.

 One particular message I recieved from the sequence is that females can also be dominant in certain situations. Chronology is used well, as from the start we get an indication of time as the lighting is very low which just about shows Ebony is climbing out of the Lake. And the sequence continous on like this. A major advantage with our genre is the hybrid genre, due to this, more of the audience is attracted towards the product, therefore enhancing profit.

Q6. Whar have you learnt about technology from constructing this product?

In the duration of creating our project, I have learnt how to:

• Use the programes on the MAC Suites, for example how to perform continuity editing.
• I have also learnt how to use the hand camera while filming scenes such as the knocking on the door.

One factor which limited me was techincal difficulties we encountered, such as computer malfuntions. During our second day of filming we had no tripod and therefore had to create our own tripod stand with household items.

To the left, we can see Katherine and Danielle creating our "invented tripod". Because we had lack of equipment, which was an interesting experience. This however, proved slightly more difficult with camera angles, for example canted angle shots. Fortunately, during the time of lack of equipment we used the following shots:

* Extreme Close (used with Ebony's red eyes)

* Low angle shot ( used in the woods)

* Medium Close up shots (used on shots like wood scenes

* Extreme long shot ( Ebony in forest)

The image below  (Ebony in the forest in blury mode) this is like     this as
                                            we zoomed in on Ebony walking through the forest to show the impact of her  

condition as she walked through the forest after previousl climbing out of the river. The image below on the right is Ebony walking through the forest using a low angle shot. We used this to show that Ebony is not in a normal state of mind and that she could be potentially dangerous.

Preliminary Task
Although I wasn't present in the filming of the preliminary task, I was however present during the editing of the task. Once the preliminary task was completed, as a group we came to the conclusion that the quality of the opening sequence had to improve on from the preliminary task. We cam to this decision as, while the group was making the task, they were just learning how to use the apparatus, hense minor shakes and jumping in the continuity editing. 
Through our editing period we had problems with the continuity. This is demonstrated below in the copy of the preliminary task. Although there were problems with the editing, there was only was major shot were this was jumpy and thanks to the learning through the preliminary task, we had little of these problems during the filming of the opening sequence.

Conclusion

In a summary, I personally think our opening sequence was very good and turned out how we intended it to be. I think the location and mise en scene was perfect for the Grit Brit Industry and would succeed well in the industry. I also liked how the continuity editing worked well with all the clips added. The part I enjoyed most was definately the clip from the couple exchanging hugs and then the camera changed to Ebony and her eyes flickered to red. This worked well as it provides a contrast of love vs. hate, so Binary oppositition is used well here. Although the majority of the tasks proved effective in creating our oppening sequence, we did however have some difficulties:

• We had problems getting the scenes in the appropriate lighting in the right timing, which meant that we had to create the scenes numerous amounts of times.
• Weather conditions - this prevented some of us travelling on certain days.