Evaluation

1] In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e of film openings)
The way our film starts  is typical of other thriller films. This is by the way it starts as a normal scenario with teenage girls. It also has a build up which is also the 'trend' in other thriller films. Obviously, our film was not finished and it still had the 'story' to follow up.This is why it is not like other thriller films, because it moves quite fast. Not many films get to the 'psycological part' as fast as ours did.


The title in our film is plain and white. The word 'Stranger' is in a simple font which adds to the eeriness. This effect is used quite a lot in thriller films so we are following this trend to make it as effective as we can.


In our opening scene it is not 'scary' at all, it consists of two teenage characters getting ready in a 'normal' fashion that is stereotypical for teenage girls. The costumes and props we used were all to go along with this effect and i feel that we did a good job of this and creating a relaxed atmosphere. We did not really use any special effects in the opening scene of this as we wanted it to look as natural as possible, to ease the audience into our film.


Our chosen theme for our media was thriller. To follow typical thriller conventions we had to include:

• psychological effects
• tension
• suspense
• element of the supernatural

In conclusion we felt that we have used stereotypical media conventions associated with films that have the genre; 'thriller, ' making our media product relate ableand comparable to existing media products. This is despite the conventions in our film that are different to the typical conventions used.


2] How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our media type represents teenage girls in a way. We start with the stereotype of what teenage girls are like and how they talk, get ready and also how they get scared easily. We do this by making the characters as realistic as possible (i.e. natural, at ease, dressed appropriately)


The things that they do that makes them stereotypical to the idea of teenage girls are;

• They are getting ready, putting on makeup etc in different rooms but shouting to each other at the same time
• They are listening to music, something that is typically associated when girls are getting ready
• They panic and get scared easily. Girls are seen as being typically more scared than what boys get.

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

A production company is responsible for the development of a new media product. as the people in my group were soley responsible for every, (being an opening scene)we could say that we have acted like production company throughout our main task.

Opening titles in films usually include
-The production company/producers,
-Cast and crew,
-Film distributors,
-Director,
-Film name,
-And sound producers.
Titles are normally used as a recognition for all of the various people that worked together to finish and release a media product. This showed us that we should put out names in the titles of our product. We decided against this as we wanted to make the film look as less fussy and simple as we could get it.

The production company also makes sure that the film is advertised to the right audience. This is by getting the right distributor. A film distributor is an independent company who are responsible for the marketing and circulation of movies in cinemas, and for home viewing (DVD,television etc) There are many film distributors, some of these being; 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers and Universal Studios.

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

Obviously we will be aiming for over 15 year olds to watch our film as that is what our film is certified as. Because we gave it a age 15 certificate this also means that it cannot be unsuitable for a 15 year old eye, therefore can not be as explicit as we had originally planned.

There is not a certain social group that we have aimed out film at, instead we have tried to make it as neutral as possible. There is not a divide between girls and boys as we have tried to make it appeal for both sexes. The start appeals to the girls when they are getting ready and at the end the super naturalness appeals to males.

5]How did you attract/address your audience?

There were many ways in which we could give the audience a preview of our film but we chose to have a small group of people in a room and we watched the film and handed out our audience feedback questionnaire to gain the feedback from the group.

We chose to do this this way because it would mean that we would not show the film to anybody under the age of 15. We originally intended on posting it to a social networking 
site but decided against this because younger children would have access to it.

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

During process of creating our media coursework I feel i have learnt many things about different technologies. The different devices that i used during our main task are:
-Video Recorders
-Camera,
-Computer/Internet,
- mobile phones

I learnt more about how to use the software; 'Premiere Elements Pro 7.0,' developing my editing skills and techniques. some of these including; time stretch, duplicating, use of effects and transitions; but also how to upload our video footage onto the software and export of finished product into a movie file in order for us to burn our media product onto a disk. This took a lot of time to do until i was confident with my skills. I understood more about camera angles and techniques. I know how to do different shots and which ones work better with different scenes. This is also due to the research that i had done prior to actually filming the media. This helped us, as a group, decide which angles to use in which scenes
7]  Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back at our preliminary task, I feel that I have a more in depth knowledge on how to make a successful media product, developing both my camera skills and software editing skills in contrast from when we completed our preliminary task.

In the preliminary task it was more about getting used to the software and making the mistakes that we could learn and improve upon to use in our main task.

In our preliminary task our brief stated that we had to use three different camera angles, these were:
-Match on action,
-180 degree rule,
-And shot reverse shot.
this gave me experience and a small depth of knowledge on different camera angles and why they were used in media products.

For our main task i wanted to develop my camera skills, and so i researched a wide range of different angles that were used in existing media products and why they were used. I use some of these to make a typical thriller film.

video

i could not get onto my documents to get my media but it is uploaded onto my team members page


www.katieflatters.blogspot.com

Film Editing

Before we uploaded our filmed footage onto the software; 'Premiere Elements 7.0' we had to consider other factors that would be included in the editing process of our opening scene. These factors are:
-Film Name/Titles, Font and Colour
-Soundtrack and Copyright Eligibility


This made it easier when we did go and edit our film

This is what opens when we open Adobe Premiere. We had to click new project in order to start editing our filmed media to improve it and make it the best quality possible.

We renamed our media to make it easier to find so that when we went to open it we knew which file to open when we wanted to continue editing on our film

This is the screen that comes up when we go to edit our film. It allows many different things that we can do to our film. This includes making each scene change over smoother, adding audio, adding titles and credits and all the different effects that we can do.

I had to add my video clips to this programme and drag them all in separately to be able to edit them effectively. This makes it easier as we could do them bit by bit without the programme crashing.

Audience Feedback Questionnaire

The next step that we took was to create and distribute an Audience Feedback Questionnaire. This was to help evaluate our final film piece. We found out what people really thought of our piece and if we had met the requirements that we had set ourselves. We gave out ten questionnaires to different sets of people that had watched our film previously.


Question 1: After watching our film did you feel that it met the conventions of a typical thriller film? Briefly explain why


Question 2: After watching our opening scene do you think that we have maintained a steady, professorial use of the camera? Yes/No


Question 3: If possible could you briefly explain what you think will happen within the rest of the film


Question 4: Do you feel the use of a soundtrack and sound effects has contributed to creating atmosphere and tension for our opening scene? Yes/No


Question 5: On a scale 1-10 could you rate how successful you feel our opening scene is


Question 6:Could you give us some feedback explaining what you like and what you do not like etc


Question 7: How do you think that we can improve?


As Questions 2, 4 and 5 are the only closed questions they are the only ones that we were able to create graphs for.

This is the graph for question 2. it shows how many people said what to eat question. As you can see it shows the majority of people as saying yes and the minority saying no. This is a good thing for our media piece as it shows we did some good camera techniques.

This is the graph for question 4. It shows that the majority of the audience thought that the soundtrack helped create to the atmosphere although some people did say that they did not think it did. This could be something we can work on to improve. 

This is the graph to show the results from question 5. It shows what the audience rated our media products and shows that it was mainly between the 5/6 marks. This shows that there a definite signs for improvement in our media that we, as a group should be focusing on. 

For the other questions we looked at all the answers and took them all into account. Obviously all the other answers were to do with people's personal opinions but many things were repeated, this gives us help as if we film another product we can use the answers to improve on certain elements.

  

Filming

We decided to start filming on the 10th January, this meant we had to book the cameras out of school. We booked two cameras because we felt that this could make the film more effective and if any complicated filming needed to be done we could do it more efficiently with two cameras making out film overall more effective.


On 10th January we started filming, our group all met up at Amelia's to start filming. We filmed most of our piece on this day but could not complete the filming due to insufficient time. This meant we had to set another date to film on, due to the members in our team having work commitments we could not continue to film until 31st January. We completed filming on this date and so we are ready to edit.


Weather:
Because some of our filming is done outside we had to make sure that the weather forecast was clear so that bad weather such as rain or wind would not interrupt our filming. Thankfully, the forecasts were clear and our filming was able to be finished on the date that we set.



 Equipment:
For our filming we needed to use the cameras. These were 10 mega pixel Sanyo cameras in high definition (this means it can go up to 14 mega pixels). They are small cameras and therefore easy to move around and film from different angles. It is also good quality and easy to use so we got used to the settings very quickly which was advantage when we went to film. We had to book the cameras out of the school so that the teachers knew where they were and if we damaged or lost them we would have to replace them.


We needed costumes to fit each character. Each girl just wore 'general teenage girl' outfits and we dressed Amelia in a baggy hoodie with dark makeup to have a creepy effect. The costumes we dressed the girls in made the film seem more realistic, we wanted the film to have a sense of realism through it. 

Storyboard

Before filming, I made a storyboard. This was to get the initial idea of our film on paper and to see how it would work out and so we had something to go by whilst filming.

Slide 1 is an introduction, it just says that this will be our storyboard and the names of the people in our group.

 

Slide 2 in this piece shows where we first started filming, it shows me sitting in the room getting ready. This was an easy scene to stick to the storyboard as it was simple to film and the idea was also effective and added realism.

The third slide shows when the the lights go out. This is an important scene to film as it is when it starts to get supernatural. We will need to make sure that we film this scene very effectively.

The fourth slide in this image shows another supernatural scene. It is when Katie will drop her toothbrush and a figure will appear in the mirror. This is an important scene to get right.

 

This is the fifth slide. It is when me and Katie will be talking in the games room. This is where we will do the shot/reverse shot. 

The sixth slide shows Katie walking towards the generator. This will be filmed outside with only an outdoor light on. We will film her from behind and then from the front.

Slide Seven shows Katie in the pool room walking towards the generator. This needs to be a very 'creepy' scene as it is what the other have been building up to.It needs to be silent and the filming needs to be precise.

This is the last scene that we are going to film. After Katie walks off it shows the hooded figure lurking in the generator room! This should give our audience an unexpected thrill.

The Script

This is our script that we used whilst filming. We have three characters in our script and two talk more than the other. When we film we will try and keep to this script as much as possible to make our film flow in the right places.

Target Audience

We need to figure out what target audience we would like to attract with our film. A target audience is a group of people that would be most suited to the product that we are making. In our case it is a small film that we are producing and we need to know who is most likely to watch it and we can adapt it to their needs.

Most thriller films nowadays are certificated 18s which makes the target audience to be 18 and above. Ours however is not as it is not a very long piece and we are targeting our classmates (who will watch it and give feedback). This would mean we would have to put an aged 15 certificate on our film.

This is so we can have a clear understanding of what we want to achieve whilst we film. The audience questionnaire we sent out was mainly to 16-17 year olds. This is where we start from as the information we have collected would have been from their mindset. This gives us some information about what they like and expect to see from the thriller genre. As we already have that information for that age-group.

The gender information is not as important as the age-group. This is because no matter what the gender it is it all depends on each person's individual interests. Both male and female groups enjoy thriller films, but it is not to everybody's taste. However, in the idea for our film, the target audience varies- at the start when the girls are getting ready it is aimed for more of a girly audience (girls getting ready, gossiping etc). The ending, however, it aimed at both genders as that is when it turns psychological. This generally interests both genders. Because we have all females in our production it might attract a female audience more than the male population.

Camera Angles

There are few camera angles that we must include in our filming. These are;

• Shot/Reverse Shot
• Match on Action Shot
• 180 degree rule

This is a film technique used to show one character looking at something off screen. Usually the character is in a conversation. The camera then switches to the person that the original character was looking at. Since the characters are shot facing in opposite directions, the viewer unconsciously assumes that they are looking at one another. The shot/reverse shot is a shot of one subject, then another, then back to the first. It is often used for conversation or reaction shots. We plan to use this shot when me and Katie are in the games room having a conversation. The camera will flit in between each of us therefore making the shot/reverse shot.

This is cutting from one shot to another view that matches the action and place of the first shot. This creates an impression of continuity although the shot although the shots have been filmed weeks apart. If the character begins an action in the first shot and complete the action in the next, a visual ‘bridge’ is created which acts to disguise the cut from one to the other. A typical example of this is a car entering from one side of the shot and leaving them appearing from the left again. We used this shot when Katie was walking towards the door in the games room.

This is a basic film editing technique used usually in conversations and to distinguish the left/right relationship between two people. To do this there is an imaginary line between the two people to maintain continuity, this line is not to be crossed. A new shot from the opposite side is known as the reverse shot, the character will be seen to have switched places, but from the viewers perspective, will be in the same place. We used this technique whilst in the bathroom and Katie was shouting through to the other room to me.

Location

We have decided to have our filming at Amelia's house as we feel that this can bring all of our conventions together in an easy and effective way. This is because at the end of the garden there is a pool that we wish to use to make our thriller different and effective. We will start filming upstairs where Katie will be in the bathroom and I will be in Amelia's bedroom. We will be speaking to each other through the different rooms and the camera location will capture this effectively.

The second room that we will use in our location will be the games room downstairs after the house has gone dark due to a power cut. This room is dark and next to the garden so it is a good place to hold a conversation.

The filming then moves down the garden, when at this point will be pitch black and not a light in sight. This also means that we have to ensure it is dark when we are filming. At the bottom of the garden is a swimming pool with a roof over the top. Having the swimming pool at the bottom of the garden means that we can add to the psychological effects of the watcher, by making them think that there is something/someone in or near the water. This is ultimately the main reason for choosing Amelia's house as our location and we hope that this can add a twist to our filming.

The location we used for our first scene was in the bedroom. This was when i was getting ready and shouting to Katie through the bathroom. We thought that this would be the most effective as it seemed 'real' this is because when getting ready the bathroom and the bedroom are the main places that girls go. This adds realism. 

The second location that we filmed in was the bathroom. This flicked from where I was getting ready to where Katie was getting ready. Katie was brushing her teeth in the mirror. This is where we started filming the 'supernatural'. We could make good use of the mirror and when Katie dropped her toothbrush, a figure appeared...

We then filmed from the top of the stairs. This was when things started to get scary. It was used for long in the film, only when I ran screaming down the stairs because the lights flickering were scaring me.

We then got the shot of when i came down from the stairs to make it seem more dramatic and effective. I ran towards the camera using match on action.
















This is the scene that we filmed in the games room. We used shot/reverse shot for the conversation that took place here and also match on action when Katie walked towards the door.

The last location that we filmed was outside. However the quality of the pictures that we took were not good enough to post. The rest was filmed going up to the pool area and then in the pool area.

Audience Research Questionnaire

We sent out around 20 questionnaires to various people around college and waited for the answers to come back to group the data. We asked four questions that we could group the information and could see what the audience want to see in the thriller genre. This will help us when we start to film and think of our idea. (we can do it taking in the preferences found in our audience questionnaires)

This is what our questionnaire looked like, it is visually very easy on the eyes and simple to understand.

I made graphs to show the results of the audience research questionnaire more clearly. It helped me visually see what the audience wanted in a more effective way.

This is the chart for question 1. As you can see horror was the main choice of genre that the audience liked. Thriller was the second favourite choice of genre. This is good as it shows that a few of the people filling in our questionnaires are interested in thriller films, this makes our research more valid.

Our second question was 'Why is this your favourite genre?'. The answers we got for this question were extremely difficult to put into graph form and, therefore, we could not do it as it was based on individuals opinions. It was helpful, however, in finding out why people's favourite genre was thriller. This means that we can take the conventions that appeal to people and try our hardest to put it into our filming.

The third question was an open question 'what makes a thriller film' we sent out these questions and writ down the answers that people gave us. This graph allows us to see what thriller concepts the audience would like to watch.

The fourth question we asked the audience what thrillers they had already seen. The audience could fill in more than one box which is why the answers come to more than twenty. As you can see, Jaws was the top answer. As I deconstructed Se7en it was reassuring to know that a few people were familiar with this type of film

This question was asked in the same way as question 3. We asked the audience and then collected the feedback, it shows the importance of each aspect and what the audience would like to see. It means that we can now see what will make our film interesting and the aspects that we need to work on the hardest.

Second Blog Entry

So far we have decided the idea (genre) for our main task and have started to think of possible ideas that we could use for our film. We have designed our Audience Research Questionnaire and are in process of retrieving the answers. This will help use decide what the best ways to construct our film will be. It also shows what an audience are looking for in a thriller film and what will make our production more effective and interesting.


I have also deconstructed three openings of different genre of films. This will help me when it comes to filming our film as I am aware of the different techniques that can be used whilst filming and the ones that will be more effective for me and my group to use. It starts to give us all ideas about how we want to film ours.