1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our film opening has followed quite a lot of conventions of the horror / scary genre. For example in ‘The Ring’ there are two teenage girls in the opening in a bedroom in the leading up to what’s going to happen. In that case there was a phone call and weird happenings afterwards in the kitchen and when the TV suspiciously turns on. But in ours the two girls are just in the bedroom watching television and then they fall asleep, but one wake up and goes to get a drink from the fridge and this is where the main story starts to unravel. However our opening starts off in the park and then goes to a shot of the house when they’re walking home and have gone into the house. This is challenging the normal convention as a horror opening would normally start off with an establishing shot of a house (to set the scene) and then go into the rest of the story.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
This film represents teenage girls as very vulnerable to older people of the opposite gender. This is shown by them being stalked by a man and then kidnapped and they couldn’t defend themselves as they were not strong enough and were approached in a very secretive way. It also shows girls as always being with their friends, having sleepovers, watching television and doing very stereotypical ‘girly’ things. The girl’s bedroom is also really messy which shows teenagers as being very stereotypically messy and untidy. It also represents young men as being quite violent and not thinking about their own actions towards other people and their property. This is shown when he breaks into the house through the back door and then hiding in the kitchen while the girls were upstairs. Also at the end he speeds off in the car, this shows men as being careless drivers as oppose to women.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
There are main distributors of films; these include Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks, Universal, Icon, Pixar and 20th Century Fox. Although theses aren’t all companies that distribute horror films. Examples of companies that distribute horror films are Entertainment which distributes films such as The Mask, Saw, Final Destination, The Son of The Mask, Scream and more. Mainly DVD shops, cinemas and supermarkets would sell and show a film. DVD shops would be through renting it out for a period of time and having to give it back or actually purchasing a copy of it, current shops like this are Blockbuster. Cinemas would show the film in screenings over a period of time before it is released on DVD or for download. Current cinemas that would show this are Showcase and Odeon etc. Supermarkets will also sell DVD after it’s released at the cinema. These are places like ASDA, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Morrisons etc; these will all sell the DVD at competitive prices to increase sales.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
The main audience for our film would be anyone over the age of 15 as it would be rated as a 15 in the cinema and on the DVD case, which mean that if you’re under the age of 15 you wouldn’t be allowed to go into the screening of this film and you wouldn’t be able to purchase the film when it has been released on DVD either. But the people who would relate best to it would be teenagers and younger adults as they may be able to remember a time when they slept over a mate’s house and they could relate it to that which would make it scarier for them. Also parents could relate to this through having children of that age and the thought of that happening to either them or their child will make it scary for them too. But overall it’s aimed at very wide range of people which is best as it would increase the chances of it being watched at the cinema and the bought in the shop which will make the producers money.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
We addressed our audience by using a few conventions that are currently used in horror films. These are, the ‘happy’ soundtrack going to and tension building one, this really helps to create an atmosphere when introducing unknown characters into the film. Another convention being girls as the main focus, in this case they’re being stalked and then kidnapped by a strange man. Having a man as the antagonist in a horror film is also a convention carried out through many films, they’re used because men are seen as the more dominant/ stronger gender which helps make the tension building process a lot more affective when using the over the shoulder shots and close ups of him. Also with using two teenage girls as the main focus is creates a very wide target audience as people can very easily relate to what’s happening throughout the film. Another convention that is very common is an establishing shot of a house, this is really effective as it sets the scene and with it being someone’s home it makes it scarier as it’s normally seen as the place where you feel safest but in horror films this isn’t the case as you become trapped in your own house. The normal tension building music used in horror films is another convention that we have used. Another thing we done was used a short name ‘Lights out’ so that its catchy and easy to remember, other well known scary films also have one or two word names such as, ‘Scream’, ‘Saw’, ‘The Grudge’, ‘Final Destination‘ and many more.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
The main thing we used while constructing our film and putting all of the shots together was iMovie on an Apple Mac, this is a really effective program to use as it has very professional transactions between shots such as cross dissolve and fade to black/white and it is also very easy to add text for the names of people included in the making of the film and for the title of it. Although at time it can be very challenging to use as things don’t go in the correct place at time and it can be hard to get the soundtrack and the shots to go together perfectly, but we did overcome these problems after many tries. I have also learnt that when recording the shots you have to make it for a lot longer than needed so that you have enough videoed footage to create the best sequence of shots possible as we had to go back and re-film certain shots and make them longer than needed, because we didn’t have enough of it to put together what we thought would work best. We also had to re-film things while we we’re filming as I had to get used to zooming in and out at the correct times to follow what people were doing. Another reason was because some shots cut people’s heads off so these had to be filmed again to get them correct.
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
In our preliminary task the continuation of props didn’t work too well so we took extra notice of the little things in our main project. We have also learnt how to use the 180 degree rule effectively this is shown at the fridge scene before and while she is being captured. Also in our preliminary task there was too much dialogue which isn’t very affective in just a short video/ film opening. So we included less dialogue in the opening to make if more affective and to also build up tension. Also the over the shoulder shots worked really well in our preliminary task so we used this again when showing ‘the man’ in our actual opening, this worked well as it he identity wasn’t revealed throughout the whole opening, which still leaves you to question who it is? Why did he do what he did? What’s going to happen next? This makes the person watching want to carry on watching the rest of the film. As everyone knows, if the opening drags or is boring you won’t really want to carry on watching the rest of the film as it’ll take a while to get into the main plot. Also with it ending showing that the girl’s mum is calling her, it leaves everyone questioning, where is she? Why did she leave them at the house alone? When will she be back? Etc... This is another reason why people may want to carry on watching the film. Whereas our preliminary task just ended and didn’t really have any interesting plot behind it. While making our preliminary task we had a minor problem with confusing the play a pause button and recording the things we didn’t need and not recording the thing we did need. So this time we made sure that the correct things were filmed so we weren’t wasting our time. We also made sure that we used the same setting throughout the film opening. As last time we used one classroom but then the next day had to move to another as it was being used by a class. This didn’t make the continuation in the ‘task’ very good as it was noticeable.
