Evaluation

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

When researching Horror films it was clear that the most common type of convention used in them was that the girls are seen as the victims and the boys are seen as the 'baddies'. My research for the film opening of 'Scream' shows this well as it is a man controlling a girl on the phone. It is scarier for a man to be threatening a girl then the other way round. I thought the opening scene to scream was really effective and wanted to portray this as much as possible in our own horror film. I believe we accomplished this by having the two victims in the film be girls with a man being shown as the 'baddie', the one you can't trust. We were contemplating having boys as well as the girls going into the building, but decided against this as we thought that the girls would seem a lot more vulnerable being by themselves.

Another important convention of horror films is the editing of the sound and lighting that they use. I believe we did this very well in our film and that it is the sounds we use that makes the tension hit it's climax the best. We decided to keep lighting for the clips of the girls inside quite dark as this adds mystery and fear of the unknown.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The main story line to our film is that two girls have been asked to take part in a 'Social Experiment' to gain money. However, both girls don't realise that the man behind the social experiment is in fact Rosy's, one of the girls doing the experiment, father. Rosy has never met her father so is unaware of this. The man wants to torture and kill Rosy in order to get back at her mother.

I think our film opening represents teen aged girls well. The fact that both of these young girls have agreed to go into a completely unknown environment and trusting a strange man to take part in an experiment they know nothing about just to receive money shows you that they are vulnerable and aren't thinking things through. Teenage girls are often portrayed to be vulnerable when it comes to men, so our film is exaggerating this.
In the second scene when the two girls are shown, Gwen, is nervous and doesn't want to go into the house, she is having second thoughts. Rosy persuades her to go in and tells her to "Stop being a baby!" This is a good example of peer pressure. Gwen is only going into the house because she is scared of what Rosy would think of her if she didn't.

What types of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

I previously looked at '20th Century Fox' film institute as part of my research. Although this is a popular film institute, I don't know whether it would keep in theme with our film. It is more renowned for films and programmes such as; Ice Age, Star Wars, The Simpson's and Family Guy and not horror films. However, because of it being such a popular institute it can franchise many films for many ages.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for our Horror film, 'The Social Experiment', would be eighteen year old's and over. The film has graphic scenes that wouldn't be appropriate for children under the age of eighteen. By researching other Horror Films the majority of the ages are 18. Our film would be targeted at both girls and boys as it has a storyline that would fit both.


How did you attract/address your audience?

Being teenagers ourselves it was easier to understand what type of conventions our film would need to attract an audience of our age and older. We tried to make our film as believable as possible so that our audience could relate to it as much as possible. What would they do if they were in the girls shoes?
Myself ad Rosy carried out questionnaires ourselves on both, girls and boys, aged 18 and over. We wanted to see if this age range that we had targeted it at find it scary. We got positive responses from both telling us that they did in fact find it scary.

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

From creating this film opening and preliminary task I have experienced a lot of new techniques and programmes that I never have before. It has allowed me to see what programmes i work with best and what one gives the best outcome at the end.

For our preliminary task we used a flip cam to film it. This type of camera was easy to use as it was small and light so we could move it around easily to get all the different types of camera angles and shots we wanted.
Are first attempt at editing our preliminary task was on 'Final Cut' on the macs. However something had happened which meant all our clips were being played in slow motion, so made it very hard to edit. We then tried editing it on Movie Maker, a much simpler form of editing. This worked fine as all we had to do was to crop and cut some scenes. This allowed us to use different types of editing programmes before we started are main film and to get familiar with both.

For our final film opening we again used a flip cam to film our scenes because we were confident that it would do a good job. It allowed us to film our scenes quick and easily with no trouble. To edit our film we used 'Final Cut' on the macs as it has a lot more editing techniques to use then 'Movie Maker'. After a few goes at editing on the macs we had become a lot more familiar with it and found it easy to use. We did have some problems here and there but in the end it allowed us to use all the techniques that we wanted in our film. The best part about using the Macs was the quality that it produced in the outcome of our film. It made our film opening a lot more smoother then our preliminary task. Each scene runs smoothly onto the next one making it look that little bit more professional. It also allowed us to use different types of sound effects and edits to help build the tension to reach its climax. I would definitely use Final Cut again on any up coming projects.


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

Our preliminary task was a good way of introducing us to filming and editing. It allowed us to experiment with different types of camera angles and shots, such as;

1 - Match on action shot

2 - Match on action

1 - Shot reverse shot

2 - Shot Reverse shot

We kept the horror theme for the preliminary task as it would be a good start for our research into horror films and the conventions of it. We decided to not have the same story line as our final horror film opening as we wanted the preliminary task to be mainly about showing off our skills and techniques with camera angles. We didn't want to concentrate too much on the setting and costume of the characters as it was our main focus at this point.
I think we progressed hugely from our preliminary task to our final film opening.

For me, the best part about our film is the use of sound that we used in each scene. Each type of sound adds to the suspense of the film and helps build climax throughout. My favourite part is at 2:06 - 2:12 when Rosy is walking down the stairs to find Gwen's body hanging on the wall. This is where the sound is at it's best and when the climax is at it's highest. This is my favourite type of sound that we used in all of the opening. I also like how we carried on the same Jewelry Box music at different parts in the film. This would make me want to carry on watching to see if it has any particular significance in the rest of the film.

However, there are some parts that I would change about our film. I think the storyline itself is a good idea but if we were to do it again I would make it more clear as to what is going on from the start, why are there pictures of Rosy's mum and sister on the wall and what are the two girls doing at this mans house in the first place? I would probably change this by adding some more speech of us greeting the man at the door and him explaining why we are here. Although this could be seen as a positive. If people are unsure about why there are pictures of Rosy's mum and sister and what the girls are doing there, it may encourage them to watch on to find out.

Overall I am pleased with the outcome of our film. I think it captures the main conventions of a Horror film and builds tension well throughout. If I was to do this task again i would still use 'Final Cut' as I am pleased with the way are film turned out.