Candidate Number: 3050
Center Number: 20704
Wednesday 15 December 2010
Thursday 9 December 2010
Evaluation
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our production makes use of the standardised camera and editing work of real media products including things such as high and low angle shots. Close ups, medium shots. There is also use of cut’s, jump cuts, fades, etc. Another convention of horror films we decided to use was monster fodder, a character with little or no development that is killed at the start of the film to increase tension within the film and audience. It can also create a hook making the audience want to see if the antagonist gets their comeuppance. However we did break two conventions of stereotypical horror films firstly the “monster fodder” is a white male from my research a high frequency of monster fodder tends to be either females or someone of an ethnic minority. The second convention we decided to break was including a female antagonist as it may increase the appeal, in films of the splatter genre the antagonist is stereotypically a white male. We feel this change may increase appeal as females who are normally excluded by the splatter genre may be able to identify with the female antagonists whilst males will still enjoy the blood and gore of this subgenre.
Amanda played by Shawnee Smith was a large influence in the creation of antagonist.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our production puts a large emphasis on strong independent female characters challenging and subverting the genre. It also flips the idea of a strong male character upside down using a white male character as “monster fodder” unlike stereotypical films that use young teenage girls or ethnic minorities.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
We would preferably like an international partnership between lionsgate and twisted pictures. lionsgate would take a pivotal role in the distribution of our product as they have experience distributing films of the horror genre, they also often take small horror films and help develop them become franchises good examples of this include saw which was a large influence in the creation of our opening most of the inspiration of which was from saw 2, along with other movies such as hostel. It would also be a convenient time to pitch our opening to twisted pictures as their main export the saw franchise has ended after seven films.
The logos of our choice of institution.
Lionsgate
Twisted Pictures
Who would be the audience for your media product?
For our media product our emphasis was on attracting the teenage market. This is because the teen audience are the highest group of movie goers. The following graph and quote from the office of national statistics proves this statement:
“Teenagers and young adults went to the cinema most frequently. In the UK in 2008, just over four in ten (41 per cent) of those aged 15 to 24, along with 31 per cent of those aged 7 to 14 and 22 per cent of those aged 25 to 34, reported attending the cinema at least once a month.”
Article
Because of this statistical information making our audience the majority will lead to the highest viewing figures and effectively the most profit, the only thing to take in consideration would be achieving a classification of 15 from the BBFC to access the entire of our audience we may need to consider reducing the amount of graphic violence on screen. However due to our genre we will be likely to draw in the 25 to 34 age group.
However the uses and gratifications suggests people use the media to satisfy particular needs Blumler and McQuail identified four basic needs which people use to satisfy:
• Diversion – As Watson (2008) notes we use the media to escape from our routines and problems or to ease worries and tensions, for example women may compensate for the lack of romance in their marriages by reading romantic novels. Some people may even develop alternative lives and identities using the media.
• Our media product can act as a tool of diversion by entertainment purposes alone giving the viewer another world to escape into. It also may allow an element of catharsis allowing viewers to project their anger onto the situation on the film by identifying with it.
• Personal Relationships – Watson states that people may choose to identify with characters due to the decline in social contact a person has through an average day. Watson states that most people know more about the characters on a soap opera than their next door neighbour.
• Our media product can allow people to connect and understand the emotions of our characters. If this standalone product was developed into a franchise viewers may form a relationship with the characters creating a fan base and generating mass sales.
• Personal Identity – People may use the media to make over or modify their identity.
• Due to our product subverting stereotypes of the horror genre a female audience may identity with her sense of power, authority and pride.
• Surveillance – People use the media to obtain information and news about the social world in order to help them make their minds up on particular issues.
• Our media product demonstrates a issue that is quite often in the dark female on male violence and murder often women murders are represented as rather butch or mentally unstable however our killer is calm, cold and calculating.
This means that most people are able to utalize our product for one reason or another and our target audience may only be a small proportion of our actual audience.
How did you attract / address your audience?
From our questionnaire we decided to create key elements of the story and things such as setting around our participants responses and thus have decided to introduce the antagonist at the start of our movie. We also decided to use an urban location, an abandoned house converted into a dungeon appealing to two demographics of our audience both of them also the biggest. We could also further attract our audience due to the fact we have tried to challenge the stereotypical aspects of horror films, most importantly the female antagonist. This could lead to the film attracting both males and females as the female audiences could be attracted by the subverted stereotypes and the male audience for the blood and gore of the stereotypical splatter movie.
What have you learnt about technologies and the process of constructing this product?
• I have come to the realization that media products are very hard to produce and require a roster of talented professionals and state of the art equipment to produce the masterpieces they do.
• Whilst working behind the camera I have learnt a numerous types of shots and angles and the effect they create on the viewer.
• Also editing techniques such as fades and wipes along with altering the pace of editing which will either cause tension or relaxation for the viewer this will make my production look exiting and professional. I have also learnt how to time my cuts better to aid the continuity of the story. Because of this I have gained experience with the editing programs Pinnacle, Final Cut Express and iMovie.
• I have also learnt about the impact music can have on the viewer as I am in charge of writing mixing and mastering all the music for our production I have gained experience with programs such as Garageband and Reason.
• Another technique I experienced is the inclusion of special effects in editing, unfortunately this wasn’t used in the production as we all had a consensus that getting the right footage during filming was fundamental rather than trying to fix poor footage in post the action of re-filming is evident of this agreement.
Examples of Final Cut and Garageband.
Looking back on the preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the final product?
• After my preliminary task I feel I have learnt many new skills concerning the production and filming of multimedia products.
• Whilst filming I have experienced the process of allowing me to spontaneously solve problems and utilize my creativity to explore new camera angles such as point of view shots and Dutch angles
• Also editing techniques such as fades and wipes along with altering the pace of editing which will either cause tension or relaxation for the viewer this will make my production look exiting and professional. I have also learnt how to time my cuts better to aid the continuity of the story. Because of this I have gained experience with the editing programs Pinnacle, Final Cut Express and iMovie.
• I have also learnt about the impact music can have on the viewer as I am in charge of writing mixing and mastering all the music for our production I have gained experience with programs such as Garageband and Reason.
• I have also learnt much about the infrastructure of the film industry from the stages a film must go through to get into the cinema; I have also leant about the different types of distributors which launch films to specific target audiences.
The contrast between the preliminary and main tasks.
Our production makes use of the standardised camera and editing work of real media products including things such as high and low angle shots. Close ups, medium shots. There is also use of cut’s, jump cuts, fades, etc. Another convention of horror films we decided to use was monster fodder, a character with little or no development that is killed at the start of the film to increase tension within the film and audience. It can also create a hook making the audience want to see if the antagonist gets their comeuppance. However we did break two conventions of stereotypical horror films firstly the “monster fodder” is a white male from my research a high frequency of monster fodder tends to be either females or someone of an ethnic minority. The second convention we decided to break was including a female antagonist as it may increase the appeal, in films of the splatter genre the antagonist is stereotypically a white male. We feel this change may increase appeal as females who are normally excluded by the splatter genre may be able to identify with the female antagonists whilst males will still enjoy the blood and gore of this subgenre.
Amanda played by Shawnee Smith was a large influence in the creation of antagonist.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our production puts a large emphasis on strong independent female characters challenging and subverting the genre. It also flips the idea of a strong male character upside down using a white male character as “monster fodder” unlike stereotypical films that use young teenage girls or ethnic minorities.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
We would preferably like an international partnership between lionsgate and twisted pictures. lionsgate would take a pivotal role in the distribution of our product as they have experience distributing films of the horror genre, they also often take small horror films and help develop them become franchises good examples of this include saw which was a large influence in the creation of our opening most of the inspiration of which was from saw 2, along with other movies such as hostel. It would also be a convenient time to pitch our opening to twisted pictures as their main export the saw franchise has ended after seven films.
The logos of our choice of institution.Lionsgate
Twisted Pictures
Who would be the audience for your media product?
For our media product our emphasis was on attracting the teenage market. This is because the teen audience are the highest group of movie goers. The following graph and quote from the office of national statistics proves this statement:
“Teenagers and young adults went to the cinema most frequently. In the UK in 2008, just over four in ten (41 per cent) of those aged 15 to 24, along with 31 per cent of those aged 7 to 14 and 22 per cent of those aged 25 to 34, reported attending the cinema at least once a month.”
Article
Because of this statistical information making our audience the majority will lead to the highest viewing figures and effectively the most profit, the only thing to take in consideration would be achieving a classification of 15 from the BBFC to access the entire of our audience we may need to consider reducing the amount of graphic violence on screen. However due to our genre we will be likely to draw in the 25 to 34 age group.
However the uses and gratifications suggests people use the media to satisfy particular needs Blumler and McQuail identified four basic needs which people use to satisfy:
• Diversion – As Watson (2008) notes we use the media to escape from our routines and problems or to ease worries and tensions, for example women may compensate for the lack of romance in their marriages by reading romantic novels. Some people may even develop alternative lives and identities using the media.
• Our media product can act as a tool of diversion by entertainment purposes alone giving the viewer another world to escape into. It also may allow an element of catharsis allowing viewers to project their anger onto the situation on the film by identifying with it.
• Personal Relationships – Watson states that people may choose to identify with characters due to the decline in social contact a person has through an average day. Watson states that most people know more about the characters on a soap opera than their next door neighbour.
• Our media product can allow people to connect and understand the emotions of our characters. If this standalone product was developed into a franchise viewers may form a relationship with the characters creating a fan base and generating mass sales.
• Personal Identity – People may use the media to make over or modify their identity.
• Due to our product subverting stereotypes of the horror genre a female audience may identity with her sense of power, authority and pride.
• Surveillance – People use the media to obtain information and news about the social world in order to help them make their minds up on particular issues.
• Our media product demonstrates a issue that is quite often in the dark female on male violence and murder often women murders are represented as rather butch or mentally unstable however our killer is calm, cold and calculating.
This means that most people are able to utalize our product for one reason or another and our target audience may only be a small proportion of our actual audience.
How did you attract / address your audience?
From our questionnaire we decided to create key elements of the story and things such as setting around our participants responses and thus have decided to introduce the antagonist at the start of our movie. We also decided to use an urban location, an abandoned house converted into a dungeon appealing to two demographics of our audience both of them also the biggest. We could also further attract our audience due to the fact we have tried to challenge the stereotypical aspects of horror films, most importantly the female antagonist. This could lead to the film attracting both males and females as the female audiences could be attracted by the subverted stereotypes and the male audience for the blood and gore of the stereotypical splatter movie.
What have you learnt about technologies and the process of constructing this product?
• I have come to the realization that media products are very hard to produce and require a roster of talented professionals and state of the art equipment to produce the masterpieces they do.
• Whilst working behind the camera I have learnt a numerous types of shots and angles and the effect they create on the viewer.
• Also editing techniques such as fades and wipes along with altering the pace of editing which will either cause tension or relaxation for the viewer this will make my production look exiting and professional. I have also learnt how to time my cuts better to aid the continuity of the story. Because of this I have gained experience with the editing programs Pinnacle, Final Cut Express and iMovie.
• I have also learnt about the impact music can have on the viewer as I am in charge of writing mixing and mastering all the music for our production I have gained experience with programs such as Garageband and Reason.
• Another technique I experienced is the inclusion of special effects in editing, unfortunately this wasn’t used in the production as we all had a consensus that getting the right footage during filming was fundamental rather than trying to fix poor footage in post the action of re-filming is evident of this agreement.
Examples of Final Cut and Garageband.Looking back on the preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the final product?
• After my preliminary task I feel I have learnt many new skills concerning the production and filming of multimedia products.
• Whilst filming I have experienced the process of allowing me to spontaneously solve problems and utilize my creativity to explore new camera angles such as point of view shots and Dutch angles
• Also editing techniques such as fades and wipes along with altering the pace of editing which will either cause tension or relaxation for the viewer this will make my production look exiting and professional. I have also learnt how to time my cuts better to aid the continuity of the story. Because of this I have gained experience with the editing programs Pinnacle, Final Cut Express and iMovie.
• I have also learnt about the impact music can have on the viewer as I am in charge of writing mixing and mastering all the music for our production I have gained experience with programs such as Garageband and Reason.
• I have also learnt much about the infrastructure of the film industry from the stages a film must go through to get into the cinema; I have also leant about the different types of distributors which launch films to specific target audiences.
The contrast between the preliminary and main tasks.
Wednesday 1 December 2010
AS Media Coursework Version 3 Final Cut
From the second edit we decided to re-film as every member of the group had changes they wanted to introduce and the original source footage would not accommodate these needs. We decided to change location to allow us more space to film and the ability to access more shot types. The new location is also a homemade dungeon and stays along the lines of what the audience wanted in the initial research. We also decided to change some of the dialogue for example the fact the monster fodder knows the antagonists name creates a mysterious back story and a hook for the viewer to want to watch the rest of the film.
AS Media Coursework Version 2
In the second edit we tried to fix a few things from first version such as miss timed panning shots, we also played upon the idea of decreasing the amount of blood and gore. We also tried some new music.
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