(We were advised that our final film would be better without the added photo scene at the end, if we were going to re edit this again that would be something we would consider.)
Evaluation
In what way does your media product use,develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our final media product both develops and challenges conventions of real media products. Conventions exist to allow people to establish a social connection and our film allows our teenage age group to discuss and agree with the genre presented to them. Psychological Thrillers are often released for our demographic of 16-25, so we needed originality to stand out amongst others. Editing techniques like the use of split screen create a new outlook on these usually predictable scenes. We also considered the camera techniques, as these too are often predictable for this genre e.g. Hand held camera for suspense and drama.
We have also considered the characters and their conventional roles. The female character has mental health issues and suffers from alcoholism - which was a typical convention for other films of this genre. The character is both vulnerable but has a sense of fearlessness which challenges the conventions that she will run from danger. What makes our film different is the role of the male, who in comparison appears helpless to her situation instead of being the strong heroic stereotype often expressed in other films.
Our film remains original but not so far from the conventions its not recognised by our chosen genre. The film will attract audiences and hopefully keep them engaged throughout due to our clever editing techniques and original storyline. The title of our film is not conventional to our genre who tend to use name of the evil character (Hannibal) oran element of the story that is quite dark in nature (Dark Wood). Along with the simplistic title fonts it could appear like a romantic tale but as we know the story has a twist, which will keep the audience focused on our story.
How does your media product represent a particular social group?Our film represents the social group of teenagers. Our film both develops stereotypical views and also challenges our opinions of this age group.
The male character is represented as a sensible person who is obviously grieving for a loved one - showing a sensitive side not often seen when representing male characters.
The female character represents the stereotypical beliefs that all teenagers party and drink themselves into unconsciousness. The female character's actions are topical with the new stories today (that females are more likely to binge drink and find themselves in the gutter or unaware of dangers such as traffic). Her scruffy appearance and lack of interest as she walks shows she has no care for her looks and well-being. In contrast the male character appears smart and takes care to look as he crosses the road. They both could represent class differences or perhaps the stereotypes we have become accustomed to.
What media institution might distribute your media and why?
Our production company, as you know was 'Funky Monkey Productions' dealing with all aspects of the filmaking process. If we were doing this for real would need funding from other companies to create a film that would best attract viewers.
As our film is relatively low budget and British made we would be more likely to get support from a British based institution. Hollywood companies wouldn't be interested due to the fact that our small production wouldn't attract large profits. Therefore i would expect a company like Film4 to distribute our film. This would allow our film to be open to audiences in both the cinema and perhaps their TV channel as well. Film4 supports British based films and raises their profiles because of their well know and trusted name. Our film would be likely to achieve success to the best you could expect with a company like Film4 behind us.
Who is your considered audience?
Our chosen demographic was an age group of 16-25 year olds. This was because we had found from previous research that this age group were more likely to watch films, and the films they did watch were likely to be of our chosen genre.
Also we could not of lowered this age group due to the restrictions on age certificates that i had researched before hand. We were therefore aiming to get a certificate rating of 15 to make it more available to our age group. If the certificate was to be lower we would be unable to attract the age group we wanted as it would appear too childish perhaps or unappealing to the psychological thriller fan base.
Older age groups may also take an interest to our film but would not be directly targeted as the audience by us. They may just be interested for the genre or intriguing storyline.
How did you attract and address your audience?
We first used the genre of psychological thriller to attract our audience. Although there is great demand for this genre, not many have been made well in recent years. This combined with our storylines originality helped us to attract viewers. The audience may also be attracted by the representation of their age group in our film. They may see themselves in the characters and relate to the story being expressed. This would attract them to discover more about the story and those who could not relate may be able to understand how others are effected by teenage issues. When it comes to actually advertising the film - if it were to be realeased, we would make use of the social netwroking sites as before to get a fanbase together before it actually goes to the cinema.
What have your learnt about technologies and processes in construction?
During the process of making our film i have learnt a great deal about the technology used to produce our finished product. We had to adjust to the new technology and take time to learn new techniques and understand how to get the best from our software. I had to get used to using the camera on a tripod and spend time on how to get the best shots from the small hand held device.
Editing was also difficult at first. I had never used CS4 before and was only used to simple editing software such as Windows Movie Maker. We had to spend time experimenting with clips and working out how to best make the software work for our film. As we had difficulty with sound previously, we decided to leave it out of our final film and use the editing software to our advantage with a great soundtrack overlapped.
The processes of making a film were easy enough to grasp and as a group we found it easy to produce the film to the best of our ability. We also had time to re film and look at production in detail.
I have also become confident in using blogs - something which i had never been able to do before. Finally i have learnt techniques to include links, photos and videos on the blogs using embedded codes and Html, which i hadn't done before either.
Looking back from the Preliminary task, what have you learnt in progression to the full product?
Looking back to when we first began filming for our preliminary task, i believe we have learnt alot. When we filmed scenes for the preliminary we only filmed what we needed. We learnt from mistakes and for the final film we over filmed everything to edit a version that is free of imperfections like a lack of sound.
We also learnt how to improve filming techniques and how to use the tripod to our advantage when getting smooth panning and steady zooms. I used to re film whole sections to create perfect scenes but now i have learnt this is not necessary as editing together small parts also works just as well.
Editing was a struggle for the preliminary and we took a long time trying to work out the complicated software. As we got used to CS4 we were able to experiment more and eventually come up with our final film in half the editing time it took for the preliminary.
Due to poor sound technology on both the camera and microphone we decided to not include sound in our final film. This allowed us to re film scenes without the worry of sound transitions and breaks in diegetic sound.
Finally, from the preliminary task to main task i have learnt all that is needed to produce a film and feel with this knowledge i would be able to create visually effective films like this in the future.
