Evaluation
- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media product "The Game" uses the stereotypical antagonist in a thriller as being male, but we subvert this by also having a female along side the two males, statistically it is mostly males who are stereotypically killers and murderers. Also normally in the convention of thrillers there is one particular target of the attack but we decided to go against the stereotypical genre of thriller films and use a group of students that was targeted. Although not all of the revision session students would be the main focus, they are just in the wrong place at the wrong time and as a result of this are targeted as well. An enigma code was used to create a mysteriouss feeling in the air by starting off watching the three killers, two male and one female walking towards the school and then cutting to two killers and finally cutting to, and following just one killer. This was to make the audience wonder where they've gone and unsure when they will pop up next adding more of an effect on the audience. The conventions we used are for a thriller but it tips in to the psychological thriller genre as well. - How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our characters represent 16-18 year old's who attend a college this is so the target audience of 15-24 year old's can relate to the characters as they are in or have recently attended a high school, college and even university. Gender is representation is equally shared as we use both male and female killers and the revision class is attended by a mixed gender class of both male and female students, which defies the normal conventions of a thriller. The killers behaviour shows large evidedance to suggest mental instability, maybe wanting to take some sort of revenge. The killers are dressed in hoodies but this isn’t as there are ‘hoodies’ as in the sense of teenagers hanging around outside shops in gangs, It is pureley to keep their identities hidden from the victims which are the students and also to keep their true identitys hidden from audience adding earyness and suspence. - Who would be the audience for your media product?
The Primary target audience is 15-24 year old male with a secondary target group of females in the same age range. We have have chosen a demographic of a similar age to our characters so they will find it easier to relate to them. This will increase the likely hood of them enjoying the film. The certification is 15 so as not to exclude the majority of our target audience. If we had it as a 12a we would not be able to achieve what we wanted with the film.
How did you attract/address your target audience?
Having set the film in a college this allowed the audience to relate as most of them will have been to college at some point making them able to think that could of happened to me or could still happen. This will make the whole movie more terrifying to them. We would also expand on the student characters and add in some lighter moments before the attack occurs because if the audience laughs with them then they are more likely to react when one of them dies. - What have you learnt in the process of constructing this product?
The filming equipment was pretty straight forward to use. Although we had trouble with getting the camera to tilt in the direction we wanted. We were going for a look up from the student to seeing a masked figure out the window but couldn't get the tripod to go up and down only side to side. We worked it out and filmed it all, this shot didn't make it into the final cut due to continuity and the fact it looked more humorous that scary. Getting the CCTV style shot was interesting to say the least. The tripod wasn't long enough to reach the ceiling, so we had to balance on a chair holding the tripod as high as we could. Trying to get a steady shot also having difficultly actually seeing what we where filming. We did get the shot as you can see in the film.
We used Adobe Premier Elements for our editing. It was easy to use, had great effects which is a bonus when you want to do a montage like ours. We used a good effect on the CCTV having the 4 screens, we wanted to get 4 different images but unfortunately we were unable to do so. The Ghosting effect was one of my favourites, really made the montage look creepier. We did have some difficulty when it came to the titles and actually getting them to shake. We tried several different effects and found we had to add them more then once and then they'd work, but when you played it again it was very temperamental sometimes it did it a lot of the time it didn't but we worked with it. Another issue was that the computer kept freezing. At one point we had done loads of editing and got it so good, then it froze and we had to log off and log back in. We lost all we done in that session so we had to do it all again. After that we started saving every time we finished editing a shot, so it would happen again. The soundtrack we used was from the opening sequence of the movie 'Se7en' which we managed to edit the shot transitions and certain movements to fit the beat for example when Sam is walking down the corridor the shot goes fuzzy and he speeds up, also during the zooms in and out, in certain sections, and right at the end with the title. A section of the soundtrack just before the end was cut out as it was too long and we wanted the final boom with the title. We did add some of our diagetic sound back in, (the door opening, the running water,) but for some reason when we rendered it, it was lost. Most likely didn't do something correctly and so it just cut it out but as far as we new it worked in the editing screen. - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from the prelim to the full product?
the major lesson and most important aspect i have learnt is simply, that saving regularly is very important as numerous of times we would progress a lot with the production of our film and the computer malfunction would stop us in our tracks and lose all the progress we had gained during the period time of work. working in a larger group than just two members you get better, and alot biger range of ideas some silly and very far fetched but some very good simple but effective ideas, due to all of the members using each others idea and bounce off each other ideas prgressing them into more suitable and well thought out ideas. in our group i think that every ones different aspects of their distinct personalities played a very strong role in put in the ideas for the editing and it worked very well and proved extremely effective. another lesson i learnt was the story board was more important than i first thought, so when coming up with the story board i left it partailly bare, with little detailed discriptions and drawrings showing what will be taking place and when and where. we new what we wanted in the shot and the shot types but i think by not putting an incredible about of detail in we didn't commit ourselves to doing a particular effect we could experiment with it a bit more which i think helped us get our finished product. Also probably would have been good to go back to the storyboard and fill it out with a bit more detail. - Overall, I liked our final product called The Game and think we was somewhat succesfull in acheiving the sort of final cut we wished to have acheived. for the audience who watched out film opening all gave very good reveiws on how well the non-diagetic soundtrack fitted into the effect of the well thought out editing style and, the montage was very good in adding a mysterious atmospshere, and mood to the film opening. the downside to the film was the unclear stroy line, where some of out audience had problems understanding the story line and that was a very big, flaw in the opening, on the other hand some of our audience have seen film opening like se7ven and, had noticed what sort of effect we was going for in building up the atmosphere for the rest of the film.
