16. EVALUATION

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EVALUATION OF THE PROJECT

The brief that I chose required me and my group to create a film opening, horror being the genre that we chose, lasting a maximum of two minutes. Overall I am very pleased with the outcome of our film opening, especially certain camera shots which I feel helped convey the mood and tone. One of these camera shots that I am particularly happy with would be the high angle shot used (at 0:18) when the girl runs in from outside. This makes her look very vulnerable and sets the audience up for something that could happen that is beyond her control. I also feel that the tilted camera shot we used (at around 01:15) when she was walking down the hallway was very effective as it showed a sense of panic and added to the tension of the scene. I particularly loved how the camera angle was slightly slanted, this gave a distorted kind of feeling, almost foreboding what is going to happen. I also feel that the quality of our editing was very good throughout as we made sure that we didn’t cut each camera shot late or too early, we learnt a lot about achieving continuity editing from our preliminary exercise. Another aspect I felt was strong about our film opening was our choice of music to help intensify the mood. I felt that music plays a very important part in all films as it helps support the mood that is being created. Without the music I feel that most films lack something, which is why it is needed most of the time. Especially in horror films I think that music is very important as it amplifies what a person is feeling and the tension of the situation, which is definitely what I think we achieved with our music choice. I also believe that where we chose to place our title and credits was a very good decision as it didn't distract the audience from what was happening. We used the title (at 01:39) to show that a few minutes would have passed from the previous shot. However, even though I am very happy with the finished product there are only a few parts that at times were quite clumsy; this is mainly due to the fact that we were very limited with our technology when filming. The shots that i'm talking about are from the start to when the girl runs into the door. We only had one handheld camera and one microphone so when we were filming outside in the dark (00:00 – 00:10) the quality of these shots was not as good as we would have hoped. Also, the sound quality was not as good as we wanted it, when we were filming outside we had to remove the sound from these shots as the wind got in the way which meant we had to add in sound effects of footsteps instead of using the real sound from the film. I feel that this has impacted slightly on our final product as this makes the beginning look less professional than the rest. But, I do believe that the quality of the filming inside after this bit was very good and made up for the slight mistakes made before.

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

After studying other movies in the genre of horror we were aware that to create an effective opening sequence of our own we must follow some of their conventions. We believed that by mostly keeping to stereotypes and conventions of other horror films like that of those in our research this would make our film opening appear to be far more authentic and recognizable to our audience. Our film opening uses and develops many of the conventions of those in existing horror films such as the use of dark locations, which help create a sense of mystery. We decided that we would use a dark hallway, which represents an isolated location which lends to the idea of "no escape" in horror films. We also used quick editing when it came to the main action of the attack which is often used which makes the scene appear more chaotic and scary. Another convention we followed was that normal teenagers are usually used in horror movies. We thought that we would use ordinary teenagers as this would make the audience more interested and more able to relate to the people in the film, especially as our audience is mostly teenagers. Another conventional technique used in horror films is the use of unsteady camera shots, this makes the audience feel disorientated which goes with the action that happens, we decided to use this as it adds to the tension of the scene. We also used close ups of the victims face because this shows their emotions, which are often used also. Aswell as this it is common in horror films to use a young female victim, and we decided to do this aswell.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

One of the social groups represented in our film is gender. Stereotypically, females are seen as the weaker sex and more unwilling to fight back, and after researching existing horror films this was seen in a few, for example Scream and The Ring. There is commonly a female victim used that is shown to be vulnerable and alone and we decided to follow this in our horror movie opening, which shows the girl trying to run away but getting caught. So with this stereotype in mind, we decided that to use a stereotypical pretty blonde girl and that after the group had split up, the camera would follow where the girl goes, and she would be the one to be attacked and killed without fighting back.Another social group that we represented in our film opening was age. In most horror movies that we have all watched and studied the people in them are usually teen aged. This could be because there are a lot more story lines that can be based around them. We decided to use teenagers in our film opening with our main actress being 19 years old. Aswell as this the storyline was that they were running away from the police at the beginning before they all split up and run away. This can be seen as a stereotype that some teenagers are bad and often get in trouble with the police.

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

Because we followed the genre of horror very closely I think that film companies that specialize mainly in horror films may distribute this film such as Twisted Pictures. Also maybe it would be a British distributor such as Hammer Films may as this is a company in the UK and this film company is very much known for making horror films which means that these companies probably would attract the audience that our film appeals to. Another example of a film company dedicated to producing horror films is Ghost House Pictures which may distribute our film also. This could be because our film closely follows what these films companies would like to distribute and what they are known for. However it could be seen that Independent film companies would distribute our film due to the fact that it is low budget. Major film companies may not want to distribute our film because the actors in our film are not known or because it's low budget.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

One of the first things that we decided to do was closely decided what the target audience we were aiming our film towards would be. We decided that it would be quite a wide target audience of both males and females aged from around 15 to 30 years old. This age range of people may be likely to go to a cinema to see a film. From studying and watching other horror films, when they contain mild violent scenes they are usually certified as a 15, if they have very violent gory scenes that are certified as an 18. As our film is of the horror genre and included a mild violent scene, we knew that this would not be suitable for a young audience and so decided that our film would be certified as a 15, and so our audience shouldn't be any younger than 15. We also thought that the majority of elderly people would probably not be that interested in horror films and probably would not go to the cinema that often.

How did you address/attract the target audience?

We felt that by sticking closely to original conventions of horror films that this would make it recognizable to our audience and would make them more likely to want to watch our film. We also used the idea of "unanswered questions" which make the audience want to carry on watching and to see the resolution and outcome of the film. For example the audience may want to know who it was that attacked the girl. For our opening sequence we wanted to convince our audience to continue watching the rest of the film, which is why the opening of the film is very important. We felt that if the opening wasn't very good this would not make the audience be interested in watching the rest of our film so we decided to include an exciting opening sequence. Another way that we attracted our target audience was by using characters that they could relate to. As our audience was mostly teenagers we decided to use teenagers in our film. We also made this storyline easy to understand so that the audience would be able to follow on and be aware of what was happening.

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

One of things about technologies that we learnt through this process is that all the elements such as the filming, lighting, sound and editing are all needed to create a good piece of work. If one thing is not as good as the rest this can really show during the end product, for us the sound was the hardest part to make perfect. We learnt that it is very demanding to get everything perfect when filming, so it was definitely best to film each shot more than once to avoid having to go back and do it again if we were happy with something. We particularly learnt that it takes a lot of time and effort when editing because every single shot has to be edited perfectly together in order to demonstrate continuity. Due to our limited use of technology, which I feel we handled effectively, we were not able to be completely satisfied with everything mainly due to the fact that the sound and lighting wasn't perfect, but if we were to do this again we would have tested the sound more thoroughly using the microphone before filming it. Another thing we learnt was that it is very time consuming when filming as we had to make sure that each shot was perfect. We learnt that to achieve shots that were still it was best to use the tripod which makes the shots seem much more professional.

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, we learnt a lot from this which helped us in our main task, especially concerning using technology such as editing. We were able to familiarize ourselves with how to use the cameras and microphones and this was a good thing. When filming our preliminary most of our group, except one person, had little to no experience concerning filming and editing so this was useful for us to get to know a bit about the technology prior to working on the main task. We were all more knowledgeable on how to achieve continuity editing through the preliminary, as this was the aim of it, which helped us greatly when we came to the main task. One of the main errors we made in the preliminary task was concerning sound, as we filmed a person entering a room the sound from outside the room and so the scene didn’t flow very well when the camera cut to inside the room. We learnt from this and made sure that the sound in our main task should flow better when cutting to a new camera shot. I feel that our main task was of a far better quality then our preliminary task was as we learnt from our errors.