Section 12: Evaluation

Media Evaluation

The assignment consisted of having given the task to plan thoroughly and produce an opening extract of a thriller film. Each student was placed in groups in which the teacher decided to choose at random. The group I was in consisted of Tuesday Povey, Frances Coyne and Josh Gemmell in which provided a good well working group of people to work with. To start off with we were asked to produce a detailed blog a various aspects in detail which we would be including into our production and research which would help us to make our production as well constructed as we could. To begin the research we had to analyse two thriller films individually as well as analysing several thriller films as a class. Various other tasks ranged from making producing storyboards to questionnaires and edit decision lists.

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

From looking at many different thriller films and analysing them individually, when comparing the opening to a thriller film that our group created to the thriller films analysed we can see there is not that many differences but more similarities. As we scaled down each thriller film we analysed we knew what to put into our own film we were making so when comparing our to another thriller film we watched we made sure that the camera shots, graphics, sound and many other aspects of films were along the same criteria to ensure our film was up to the standard of many other well known thriller films. We choose to make our thriller because when brainstorming idea and choosing some aspects from other films we all came to the same conclusion in making it the way we did, moreover the questionnaire results also help deter what the film was going in to include or exclude. In choosing what to include and exclude the questionnaire results did help but as a group we narrowed the results down and all agreed on what was best for the film. We used conventions throughout out thriller which mainly included partial vision where you can’t see the killers face only his body in all of the film. We decided not to do anything different from the trailers we watched as a group because we thought that if we changed main aspects of a thriller opening it no longer stands as a true thriller film. Personally I think that our opening sequence is successful as a whole but there could be major adjustments. These adjustments would include changing many camera shots so there is a wider range of them, changing the music to build up more suspense, use the flash backs that we said we were going to include but didn’t and finally work towards the best editing as possible which would finish off our film to its best. We decided to follow the conventions and have a male killer, we did this because we thought using a female killer would be harder to create suspense as men are stereotypical imperior/powerful therefore using a women as a killer would be less affective. When watching our final completed production it could be perceived that it is a good example of a good thriller film. This could be supported by the fact we watched many films, including Jaws, Seven etc (look at blog Section 2) analysed them thoroughly and followed in the footsteps of other major well known films to make and produce our own production.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

It took a long time to decide as a group how we would represent men and women, the main reasons being we all had different beliefs on how we should approach this situation, in which we decided finally as a group who should be represented as who and why. We decided to represent men in the film the more dominant and more powerful whereas women were more vulnerable and weak. We decided to represent them like this because we felt women were stereotypically weaker than men and is shown in other thriller films watched, whilst men are usually the main killer in most thriller films. As there were many people who didn’t want to star in our thriller because of this we had to find two people who didn’t mind being filmed and were decent a actor/actress. No one dies in our opening sequence, we chose not to do this because as in most films this builds up suspense and lead the viewer to watch on and see if the victim really does die in the end.

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

I think that our film would feature in a cinema which would be a mainstream cinema. I made this decision because I think our thriller has the vital ingredients to become a good classic thriller as it ticks all the boxes and is on the same wavelength as many other classic thrillers. I think that our thriller is similar to of those of professional screening. We followed all the same ideas and features of any other thriller, the only thing lacking in our thriller would possibly be the editing, props, location or actors as we had all the other main components and equipment of making it to a professional standard. To a certain extent because our media product isn’t a fully made film it could be showed on the internet, for example ‘YouTube’ , this would distribute the film as well as any other cinema or distributing company would as the internet Is widely used by many people and has a huge range of audience.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

After completing the questionnaires we made and getting the feedback from the students of Priestley College, this helped to define our target audience and showed us what we had to work towards in making our opening film sequence. In making decisions we had to look at both sides of the film making and make decisions by looking at the target audience and deciding as a group what were the best ideas and ways in which to approach the making of our film sequence. I think that our film would appeal to the outside audience because it has many aspects which would appeal to people outside the target audience and in. I would suggest this because not only does it appeal to the people we have aimed and targeted it at as our film is easy to follow and clear enough for many ages to watch. Also our film is a flowing sequence and you don’t have to work out what is happening or going to happen next.

How did you attract/address your audience?

When talking about audience research we knew as a group that the elements we decided on were to appeal to the target audience. We know this because we ourselves as a group fit into the target audience and have the same ideas and views as the target audience used. As a completed production I think it appropriate for the target audience, I think this because it ticks all the boxes and questions asked in the questionnaire. When getting feedback from the target audience it was clear that, yes they did enjoy our opening film sequence. They thought that the editing was of a high quality and the sounds used for example the music was well integrated and made the film flow much better.

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

When filming the thriller opening sequence we accounted several problems the occurred thought the initial filming, the most critical of these was due to time. We only had one day to start with to film which consisted of a two hours and fifteen minute slot as the actor and actress were only available at that period of time together. There were no apparent problems with lighting due to we filmed most shots in a house and only a couple out side but it was bright enough to be a good enough quality shot. Although we managed to get sufficient sound by adding a music track to the film sequence, it was very difficult and encountered problems due to copyright. This meant that we had to either make the music up from scratch or get some music that no one had ever heard of and use this as it is copyright free. When music is copyright this means that the person who has produced it doesn’t want it being used by other people and if other people do they could sue them and take other legal action. There were a few shots we had to take more than a couple of times, for example we had to take a panning shot of the girl running passed the camera into the kitchen many times. The main reason for this was that because the camera had to be on a tripod to keep still we had to place the tripod in a difficult position on the stairs, also because when panning the shot we had to get the timing just right because the girl kept going in and out of shot and she wasn’t visible in the shot. We edited our production by using a range of editing skills using the software Premiere. We used title screens which were embedded into the production so the film flowed still and it looked affective, we also added sound to build more tension and suspense in the film which we downloaded off a copyright free website and then dragged it into the production and lowered volume and raised it to build more tension when the phone ran in the clip. As an individual I found it fairly easy to use the software, this is primarily due to I have used software along the same lines before which was and has the same controls.

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 me preliminary task I feel that I personally my skills have improved throughout making this production and the ‘ walking through the door ‘ task we produced before hand. From analysing many other films, this helped to know what was sufficient and what worked well in production. When producing the film sequence we encountered many problems which we got around but made us as a group think clearly and carefully about what to do to get around these problems. For example when finding a specific sound needed for the production we had the problem of dealing with the use of non-copyright music, in which we got round by searching the web for appropriate music. Other problems include the use of time as it was hard to find a right time and day for each member of the group and actor and actress. This made us as a group to work as a team so that we had enough time to film and to finish what we wanted to achieve. I think that if there was anything we could change about our production it would be to concentrate more on the storyline and change major parts of the storyline so more use of a variety of camera shots, and a much clearer created production. Using different styles and advanced camera shots would help our production to increase in variety and help the audience watch the film opening from another different point of view. I think that if we did the production again we could do differently several things. The main area I think we could do differently would be to change the storyline completely, doing this would pave the way for different camera shots, more tension by use of different sound and music and possibily more characters to build up tension to make the audience ask more questions about who the killer is and why he is getting revenge.