Final evaluation Jake B

Final evaluation

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

Our film is a horror film about vampires. To establish our plot we discussed different films which we personally enjoy and we used elements of them to get the basic plot of our film. We all gave input to our discussion and came up with good films. I came up with Nostferatu because the movie is about Vampires and is also one of the most popular horror films in history.  Our film emphasizes our genre with the use of our vampire characters, red text throughout the film and the black, white and red colours which represent darkness and death which vampires are typically associated with.

We used panning shots when Jacob (Matt) is walking from college and down the street to capture his movement. We also used a lot of close-up shots, in particular the clip where Jacob is confronted by the female vampire. A good example of the use of continuity and editing could be the shot where Jacob is walking from college and the shot switches from a panning shot to a close-up to a gradual long shot of Jacob as in between these shots Jacob takes half a step and this is where the two clips meet.

The music in the background at the beginning is very major key and very cheerful until Jacob is followed. Then the music changes to minor key and is very loud and screechy to show distress.

The clothing we used on the vampire characters was dark clothes with little colour at all and Jacob wears a bright blue jacket to show he isn’t a vampire. Nostferatu does this as the evil characters are darkly dressed. The final scene is set in a shaded area to show darkness and evil in our film, and in Nostferatu it does the same when the evil characters are shown. Our font colour is red to emphasize blood and vampires. The text is quite big and bold like in Nostferatu to look scary. A visual convention of our genre which we used is the vampires, the graveyard and the death scene which are all seen in other vampire films such as Nostferatu or Van Helsing.

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

In our film we stuck to the stereotype of the vampires being in more power than the human as if we didn’t do this it would be hard to understand from the audience’s perspective. We purposely made Jacob be physically lower than Marcus (David) to emphasize the power of the vampire race against the human race. We also did more close-up shots of Jacob to show the fear in his eyes especially in the ending scene where he is killed.

Jacob’s voice throughout the film can be louder than the other vampires; we did this so that it shows Jacob has courage to stand up against them but then the power balance switches when his family is in danger. Jacob wears very casual clothing to imply that he is normal and not in any power, whereas the vampires wear very dark, rich clothing to emphasize their wealth, authority and status in society.

The lighting on Marcus’s face is halved: one side dark, one side lit to show he has an evil side, then when Jacob learns more about him his face becomes fully lit as his evil side is no longer unknown. The female vampire has slightly less power than Marcus as Marcus is shown higher than Jacob most of the time and the female vampire is shown at a more level height with Jacob showing she has less power until the last few seconds.

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

Our film would have most likely have been produced by Warp films, simply because they usually invest in local films such as Four Lions which was set in Sheffield. And ours is set in Barnsley making it a similar location to Sheffield. If Time Warner produced our film, it would have been set somewhere more recognizable like London or even America, The budget will have been £100 Million or more and the actors would be professional actors with years of experience behind them to attract a wider audience. Whereas if Warp films produced our film, they would have had a much smaller budget, maybe £5-15 million and they may have even kept our original actors to save money and make the film more locally entertaining. Time Warner produced Interview with the Vampire. This film had actors like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in it who are massively popular around the globe. Actors like these would have featured in our film if Time Warner produced it.

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

Our target audience is anyone above the age of 15 (most likely to the age of 35) that has a strong passion for vampire movies and doesn’t mind mild gore, and some strong language. The audience will be more interested in the film from the local area as it is set in Barnsley. Also males and females will enjoy the film as the film doesn’t belittle any of the genders or races.

We found our target audience by using questionnaires on Facebook to people in the local and surrounding area of Barnsley. From this information we developed our film.

Firstly we looked at the responses from the questionnaires and we picked out the good points and the bad points and we based our film on the things the audience like such as ‘action’ and implemented them into our film.

5.       How did you attract/address your audience?

I think we did reach our target audience, and also I think we gained a wider audience than we first expected as one of the responses on the questionnaire was from someone in their 40’s which is above our expected audience and the person actually thought our film looked really good.

In our planning we included a very detailed plot to our film, which looked like a realistic film synopsis from a well-known production company such as Warp films. I think this alone will have interested the audience simply because it looked so professional and detailed. But also our film interests people with a love for vampire films and action thrillers or both.

Our film appealed to our audience because the three people who answered the questionnaire said it was:

-Intriguing

-Intriguing

-Grasping

In response to the question 'How would you describe our storyline?'

'Would you be interested in watching our film?'

- You would happily pay to watch it: 1

- You would rather watch it for free: 2

- You would rather not watch it: 0

This question shows that the target audience would be happy to watch the film which is a good response and also with the choice of watching it for free, someone still said that they would pay for the film.

      'What age certificate would you rate this film?'

-15 because vampire films are normally violent

-12A because vampire violence is normally comical

-12A because the film doesn't sound violent

This was less succesful as we expected our film to be a certificate 15 and 2/3 people said that it should be rated 12A which isn't our initial target audienece.

We could have improved our target audienece research by having a larger sample size and also we could have asked more questions which required more feedback than one word answers.

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

Before we went out to film we had to decide on where we were going to film and how we were going to do it. To do this we produced a story board, locations sheet and a safety sheet in order to carry out our filming easily and safely. We also decided on filming at a close location to the college.

We produced a story board to tell us where the camera would be placed at each clip so there were no complications on the day. We also created a locations sheet to show where we were filming. And finally we produced a safety sheet to prevent us from causing any damage to the equipment such as the camera and the tripod, and also to stop our cast and crew from being in danger e.g. Road safety.

The technologies we used before we filmed were Google Blogger, Microsoft Word, Facebook, Google Chrome and YouTube (for our research) all of which were accessed on the Apple Mac. We used Google Blogger to store all our work such as the synopsis, the research and planning for our film, and then we used Microsoft Word to type up all our research. We used Facebook for our questionnaire responses and Becky and I used it to communicate and aid each other with the tasks we had to do at home.  We used Google Chrome as an alternative to Internet Explorer because Google Chrome was easier to use and more reliable. Finally we used YouTube for finding similar films to ours to annotate.

                                                             

During filming we used a Sony DV camera, a telescopic tripod and a tape to record on to. The Sony camera was used to film all of the scenes we have in the short film, including the Bloopers video. The tripod was used to hold the camera in a fixed position whilst we filmed. The tape was used to record all our film onto, to then transfer onto the Mac.

After filming we used Final Cut Express to edit our scenes we recorded and to make our Blooper video.

All of the technologies we used were very successful apart from Final Cut Express at times, as it sometimes failed to save our work and it often deleted scenes and froze for no particular reason, because of this we wasted quite a bit of time trying to fix it and also re-do our work.

I have learnt how to use Google blogger and to link YouTube videos into it. I have also learnt how to use the Sony DV camera and the other equipment with it. And finally I have learnt how to do a small amount of editing as I helped Becky edit our film on Final Cut Express.

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

Our brief was this:

Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

Main task: The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

From the preliminary task I have learnt how to use the 180 degree rule and to stick by it. I have also learnt to use shot/reverse shot well and keeping good continuity between each shot.

I have got better at getting the shots to have good continuity between them by filming in the exact locations needed. I don’t think I used any other methods in our production of our film apart from just simple time management strategies for doing work at home.