Evaluation

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

Our film incorporates generic conventions of the horror genre. We have used the following conventions: Dark lighting, an unrevealing killer, a gun and an open/abandoned area. We have used these convention in our opening sequence to make the audience build up their fear, especially after the audience see the unrevealing killer fire two guns shot. This also builds up tension for the viewer as although the camera does not show who the killer is shooting at, buy yet the audience know who has been killed. These conventions also indicate within our sequence that it is a psychological horror film and this is clear to the audience because we have included a revenge killer in our film. Our film could link in with a film called ‘Wolf Creek’ because the film is based in an ancient creek and at first they think they are alone and safe, but however, they are not.

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

In our film, we haven’t really got a social group, its just based on a teenage couple. In terms of the age, they are 18 years of age and want to get away for a weekend, like a typical middle class young couple. It’s a boy and girl, (Sam & Sarah). The two genders are represented in a typical male/female role. The gender isn’t represented in a stereotypical way, as the killer in our film is a female. Usually in horrors the killer tends to be a male. But as our film is about revenge, the female takes the action on the couple that is away for the weekend and sets out to kill them. The target audience is around 15+, and the people in our film are teenagers, which then the audience can relate to if they are teenagers around similar ages and interest.

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

We haven’t gone for a Hollywood studio release film; this is for major films, which does not fit with the opening sequence that we have created. Also we don’t have any major actors or actresses playing the roles of our characters, we just have C list actors and actresses. This is because we don’t need major actors and actresses, as our film is based on the storyline and not how important the actors and actresses are.

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

The age group that our film is aimed at is 15+, we chose this because it isn’t to threatening. I think if we added gore and self harming scenes then our target audience would of moved up to be a 18. The film is torn between two genders, It doesn’t aim to any particular one, I think both could watch it and get the same effect, whereas I feel if it was two males in it and was a bit more action or gore, I think it would appeal more to the male gender. Other films that are similar to ours are probably Wolf creek, this is also about a group of people who plan to go away and it all goes wrong, they end up being stranded in the middle of nowhere and getting brutally torched. The second film that is similar to ours is Texas chainsaw massacre, they also have a teenaged group wanting to get away and they enter a house, which doesn’t turn to good. Another aspect to our films is Revenge in the narrative. Scream has a lot of revenge in the film which makes it similar story lines, as we have the killer who is a jealous teenager wanting to get her own back on the teenaged couple. We chose to set the film in a very open space, abandoned space, like many horror films, where if the group need to scream.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

At the end of our opening sequence we have ended it by showing the killer firing two gunshots. This comes across as quite shocking to our audience and leaves them thinking whether the victims are dead or not. We have also included different types of camerawork within our opening sequence so that we can show different point of view angles, such as: the over the shoulder shot of the killer watching her victims. Our audience is in the position of the killer, and we have deliberately done this so that the narrative becomes an open narrative and the audience knows what is going on but the characters don’t. However, by the end of our opening sequence the narrative changes to a closed narrative, as we don’t want the audience to witness the shooting, which makes the audience think about whether the killers victims are dead or not. This is good for the generic conventions of horror films because it adds suspense for the audience and adds a sense of tension between the narrative and the audience. Looking at our audience feedback we got a variety of different rated levels for different parts of our film. We asked a variety of different audience to watch our film (mainly focusing on our target audience) and rate us on different sections of our opening sequence, the ratings were: Minimal, Basic, Proficient and Excellent. Looking at the ratings we got, the majority of our audience rated our opening sequence as proficient.

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

At first, we had no experience with the camera, but by practicing and making a rough cut; it helped to improve our film cut. We also didn’t know how to zoom in and out on the camera, but with practice we figured this out. We came across a difficult issue when filming, which was the ground was at different levels which made it slightly difficult to film, but we managed to make the tripod more flat my changing the lengths of the legs. Once we had finished filming, we inserted the recorded scenes into ‘iMovie’. We then, added a darkening effect to the whole sequence so that we had the key convention of dark lighting. This made our opening sequence look more like a horror film. We then needed to add a soundtrack and gun shot sound effects to our sequence. We did this using ‘GarageBand’. We created a major/low key soundtrack to add to the effect of our sequence being a horror film, we also chosen a gun shot to match the sound of the gun at the end of our sequence. We then inserted these to match the righting when the killer shoot the gun – this added the real effect of a gun shot in our film.

7. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

We started our preliminary task by researching into the genre of horror films and writing a short analysis of an opening sequence of a horror film. This helped to see the use of different camera shots used and different sounds used to create the horror atmosphere. We then researched into more depth and researched into the horror genre, which was useful and helped us to add the important conventions of horror films. After this research, we began to create our storyboard and decided to base it on a getaway adventure – located in an abandoned area. Once we had come up with our storyline we then began to draw out the different shots we were going to shoot within our opening sequence and produce it as an animatic. By doing this it helped to shoot our opening in order of shots – and we knew exactly what shots we were doing and help run this smoother. Some of the shot we used on our first rough cut did not work out as well as we thought and didn’t no look as good when we put all the filming together on ‘iMovie’. We then changed some of the shot types and added some jump cuts to break up some of the sequence. Overall, I think we have produced a good opening sequence of a psychological horror film and we especially like how we have ended the opening sequence by having the killer firing two gunshots, but however, we have left the audience thinking about whether the killers victims are dead or not.