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.