Media Evaluation

Introduction:For my project, I worked in a group of four to create an opening sequence, including Polly Hindle, Steph Bolton, Danielle O'Hara and myself. We all had roles within the group, Stpeh Bolton was costume and location manager, Polly Hindle was the Editor, Danielle O'Hara was the Director and I was the Producer. Our film was about a female protaganist which is un-human, trying to find her boyfriend, who she expected to wait for her. She soon finds out that he has found someone else. After, this she seeks revenge, and the opening sequence leaves that audience with a knock at the door.


Qn 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our opening sequence was a sci-fi, Thriller combined with a Horror. As we planned to produce an opening sequence to a British Film, the conventions were very different, oppose to the American Hollywood Movies. For example, we use a female protaganist, experimented with camera shots and angles, the set was Brit Gritty, used natural light instead of lighting rigs. By challenging the "unwritten rules" of Hollywood movies, we have created a hybrid of popular genres. We have viewed and analysed films that have inspired us Kill Bill, Friday the 13th, Terminator and 28 days later. Our whole idea was to stear away from the typical predictable ending and choose something new, for example, we use a female protaganist, she has been used as an experiment and left, before she went on this experiment, she had a boyfriend, but she expected him to wait for her return. When she comes back and finds out that he is with another girl, she seeks revenge.



Also, we just generally asked people what they preferred, they stated that they dislike the predictable ending. The group tried to stear away from this. During our production of our piece we kept referring back to the audience questionnaire.

Qn 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our target audience for our projects were 16-24 years old, white British male and female teenager.
Being a British opening sequence, conventional stereotypes were not included E.g. Costume and appearance, were just day-to-day look.

We have NOT used stereotypes in this piece as stereotypes are too simplistic and can't really relate to anyone as everyone is more complex than a stereotype. Facial expression - Throughout this piece the protaganist has a determined look on her face except from when she finds out that her ex-boyfriend is now will another girl (We emphasis the change in facial expression with an extreme close-up shot), the other characters have happy facial expressions throughtout the piece except when the human girl thought she saaw something at the window. As you can see, we have used real facial expression and shown what people would look like in that situation.

Costume - The protaganist is wearing a silver dress with tights and dolly shoes, this shows that she isn't a regular girl and no-one would go out wearing that in the freezing cold, the boy is wearing a T-shirt, Jeans, trainers and a Jacket and the Human girl is wearing a dress, tights, dolly shoes and cardigan. We have used day-to-day clothes except on the cyborg, this emphasises that she is irregular.

Location - As this is a £0 budget film, a natural location was picked whihc did have it's advantages, it was free and looked more realistic, with natural light. We wanted a woody location, but thats had a long straight path-way to show the protaganist walking straight towards the camera.

We have offered an alternative representation for the audience, including protaganist (female) setting (woods and "common" house). Our aim of producing a project that did not follow the typical narrative and conventions, were successful.
Our product was a £0 budget film which means, no money was spent on making it fancy, it was real setting, natural lighting, one camera and one tripod. We had to produce what we could with what we had. By following what other low-budget British films had done, such as, Adulthood. Towards the end of the film, there is a 360 degree shot, and we thought this was a camera on a rig, but we then found out that, the film-makers had built a little train track on the floor, for the camera to roll on.


(The 360 camera spin at 7:50 minutes in) Qn 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
During research on our chosen Genre, we researched Terminator,
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT_lFIdN6qk
28 days later

Kill Bill - Female protaganist

Friday the 13th - Horror Thriller



We found after researching these projects, these institution that had produced our research pieces, weren't our ideal institution. On the other hand, we found that a British institution such as Cipher film, http://www.imdb.com/company/co0138244/ that would be more experimental, would more suitable for our opening sequence.

I believe that if a British film institution wat to back our productfor real, it would go for the characteristics that have reared away from the repeated conventions. As we have included a female protaganist, different settings, experimental camera angles, realistic camera shots, such as natural lighting, P.O.V shots e.t.c.


Qn 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?
We chose our audience specifically before the storyboards were created. Our opening seuence was intended to be for 16-24 year olds, white British male/females. This project would lie in the interest with a select audience taht enjoyed our combined Hybrid Genre of Thriller/Sci-fi/Horror.

An audience memebr which had a working cless (or higher) socio-economic status, simply for the reason that if this opening sequence and it's full film was made, the audience would be able to go to the cinemas and afford it.

As Thriller is one of the most popular genres and in this particular project, is linked with Sci-fi and horror, there will be something for a large range of audiences.

By using http://www.imdb.com/, we can see popular genres and which films have been box office success'...
Top 3 filmsQn 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

The Shawshank Redemption - 1994 Rating: 9.1, Votes: 480, 735



The Godfather - 1972 Rating: 9.1, Votes: 387, 118



The Godfather II - 1974 Rating: 9.0 Votes: 228, 646

5. For starters, the first thing that attracted the audience would be the Hybrid Genre, as three combined ganres have be used, there is already a wider audience.

In our project we don't offer a Equilibrium-Disruption-Re-equilibrium, weonly offer the Disruption, we planned to put the opening sequence as the end, so the rest of the film would tell the story that was leading up to this encounter.

All our opening sequence, is enigmas. This is another main characteristic that brought the audience in, no enigmasare answered, we leavethe audience to produce their own interpritation of the project, then they would have to watch the rest of the movie to see if their interpritation was our initial idea for the project.

Conflict or Binary Opposition was addressed to give the audience an slight indication of what the rest of the film would be like, For example, when the cyborg is standing at the window, staring into the house at the couple, this shows tension and gets the audience wondering, why? what? How?, again more enigmas

As music is potentially the most important component of a film or sequence, and the group realised this, we chose tenion building music, non-recognisable so the audience would link it with other things, as the cyborg and getting closer to the house, volume rises and creates suspense and tension for the audience.

The use of transitions in this piece was essential, so the project did not look cheap or rushed, transitions were used to lead the audience to the next 'scene', little transitions were used so they weren't overwhelming. Some interesting transitions were used. For example, the froest scene when the camera is on eye-level with character, as character is walking towards camera, a essential transition was used to show the character going through slow-motion walking to original walking speed.







Enigmas - Alot of enigmas were set, to engage the audience and make them want to watch more, enigmas such as Who is the girl with the red eyes?, Who are they? and Why is this happening? The effact of the enigmas have been proven,with our audience feeback.
Audience Feedback - When the audience were asked "What would make you  want to carry on watching it?", some audience members answered "Scary Girl", this immediately proves that intensional enigmas have been set and have had an effect.

Qn 6: What have you learnt about tecnologies from the process of constructing this product?A list of ALL tecnologies used, which were essential for our project:

• Camera, tripod, slip-disc, tapes, camera settings
• www.youtube.com - Embedding videos, Genre research, general research
• www.imdb.com - looking more into British films, institutions
• iMovie - creating our whole project, using this software, introducing effects, transitions, cutting and pasting
• CD and pendrives - introducing a soundtrack into our opening sequence
• Handheld camera - character pictures and forest research (some of these pictures were also edited on iMovie)
• Blogging was extremely essential as it was like a diary, recording all the stuff we had learnt. We split sections up so everyone had atleast four blog pages to record incluing, research, analysis, institution, audience and general planning on the opening sequence

All these tecnologies were highly used, for the production of our opening sequence, all were recommended and were extremely useful. Doing the project, I now have a higher tecnology awareness, especially in programmes such as iMovie,and what these tecnology are capable of.

I learnt how to use transistions effectively, so two shots are connected smoothly, I have also learnt how to use effects such as the red eye effect, this was basically the story teller, showing the audience that the protaganist is not human.

There were some bad points to the equipment including, we went out to shoot in the woods and the camera was not working, the tripod wasn't good in the forest scene, in the end we decided to do most handheld camera shots.

Qn 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progession from it to the full product?Looking back on the Prelim task, it really helped to see the technique that we have adopted, comparing the two, Prelim task and Opening sequence, our opening sequence has better camera shots/angles (we explored more handheld shots), settings, editing quality e.t.c  all the components needed to make a successful project like this.

Our editing has definately improved, as most members of the group wasn't the best at tecnology, we have practised used our new editing skills to create our piece.



At the end of the Prelim task, we realised that the quality of the whole opening sequence had to be better quality and improve on all aspects of the making of the opening sequence. The main problem with the Prelim task was the fluidity of editing, I feel that with the practise that we have gone through, has helped us create a more smoother link between two clips.

Conclusion -Overall, in my opinion, our opening sequence project was abig success, from knowing the tecnology to adding effects and transitions, the project including persistent work, and I am pleased with the outcome, especially with music as I think that is the key element of setting the mood and atmosphere and also gives the audience an emotion, just by playing the music with a specific piece of action.

As there is always room for improvement, there is only one thing that I was slightly dissapointed in, which was the red-eye effect of the cyborg, as it was only a one second clip, it was hard to copy it several times and then add the red-eye effect on, in teh end we decided to take a picture of the clip and add the effect onto a still picture, think that this made it look unrealistic, but we worked with what we had and that is the only thing that if we had more time, would improve.