Evaluation of main task

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

The genre of our film was horror, We thought of doing horror because it seems intriguing, the way how they use point of view camera shots and also keeping the identity of the killer a mystery. The use of sound is also very interesting e.g. the digetic sound made when two people clash into one a another. Before we made this video we looked through few horror movies and picked out a certain horror movie called ‘ Halloween’ and analysed the opening scene ( 2 mins) like: camera angles, sound etc. Our movie ‘The Unknown used a lot of the features of the movie ‘Halloween’ . We used a lot of the same camera shots like a point of view shot of the killer looking at there victims, also zoomed in shots of key features we wanted to make it stand out to the audience. This shot was used at the beginning of Halloween when the camera zooms into the house and also the scary pumpkin. The use of sound was kind of similar but a bit different as well. We made our own original beat and played it through certain parts so that the audience get the hint that’s something is about to happen. This technique again was used in ’Halloween’. Mise en scene different for e.g. the clothes my actors wore, because the movie Halloween was made in 1971 which portrays to us that the style of clothing was different back then compared to now. There were certain techniques that we used that was different to Halloween. For example we used slow motion editing when the women gets scared. Also we used close up shots of face and objects getting kicked. Few side shots was also used in certain parts of our video.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In my opinion I think this movie would be suitable for children 15 or older because, there are signs of horror in the movie but not too horrified that the children would get really scared. I say that there are certain bits really scary and certain bits which aren’t. This movie would be suitable for males/females because there are no sexist scenes or any kind of sexisms involved all the way through. I think this movie is represented to mentally ill because the killer in our movie is a person who is crazy and cant control anything he does, also he shows up in certain places very quickly and he is always there staring towards people in such away, as if he was going todo something really bad. To be honest our movie was just the opeining minutes to a movie but if it was a full movie you would be able to see how he escaped out of mental prison and also how he became like this.

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

In my opinion I think working title two (WT2) would distribute my media product, this is because, this film is classified as a class D British film, which means that this is a British movie, using UK locations but money is funded by an American company called Universal which owns WT2. Also working title 2 distributes low budget films e.g. Shawn of the Dead was one famous film with a low budget of only £4 million, which was distributed by Working Title 2. This is a similar style film to my media product. A purely UK distribution which could distribute my media product is ‘Metrodome Distribution’. This company produces low budget films e.g. ‘The Scar Crow’. Also this company would class my media product to be a Category E, because everything would be from UK.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

We aimed our product at people of the age of fifteen and older as are product is a horror, but not so scary that it has to be rated an eighteen. The age range for the product is for people between the ages of 15-30. The reason for this is because we have a young modern cast in the film, which attracts a younger audience. We did this purposely as people between the ages of 15 and 30 are the people that go to the cinema on a regular basis. We have a mixture of cultures and ethnicity’s within the cast of the film, which we purposely did to attract all faiths and races to watch the film.

How did you attract/ address your audience?

Firstly the genre we used in our opening scene was Horror. We tried to portray this genre using many different techniques such as adding sound and also changing the contrast of the scene in some parts. Firstly, we would have to have suitable music which went with the scene. We decided to have intimidating music as the genre was horror, this added a different dimension to the scene it intensified it and made it more gripping to the audience.

Than we decided to change the contrast of a particular part in the scene adding a black and white feature to it, this added a different edge to the scene it showed the Unknown Killer sharpening tools in a menacing way and the black and white feature made it more surreal, the audience could see that this man was on edge, also the black and white feature maybe at the time could represent how the man was feeling e.g. it could represent his mood at the time, it also could represent that his life was not getting better but was going down a down would path maybe there was no hope for this man I believe the audience could pick this up.

In the opening scene we used many different shots and angles to make the scene more enthralling. Firstly there was the shot of the girl running, we used a steady cam to show the scene at a much closer view, and it showed the girl trying to escape this man which would keep the audience on edge.

We also used many other shots such as the point of view shot from the girls eyes, were she could see the unknown man but nobody else could this could grab the audience’s attention but also could make them ask the question why, which maybe would lead them to watching the whole film wanting to know what happens.

We also decided to add a slow motion effect to the scene, were the girl stops and freezes in shock, the audience could take a lot from that as they may see it as a natural reaction which could add realism to scene.

I believe the techniques used would keep the audience enthralled and wanting more. Also the scene ended on a cliff-hanger it wasn’t clear what had happened to these people, however it may also leave people confused as to what was going on. But I believe the risk is worth taking as people may want to know what happened and therefore will want to watch the full film.

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

We didn’t have that much trouble using the camera because we had enough practice when we created our prelim video. We had a bit of trouble getting certain angles therefore we had to take certain shots more than once. Also for certain shots we had to wait because the reflection of the sun was enabling us to record the shots as we hoped. The tripod was really helpful because the camera would stay steady and make the movie look more professional. The editing software was pretty simple because again we had practice using it for our prelim video. We did struggle few times when we had to render few parts we edited e.g. when n we made certain parts black and white, and also when we added slow motion effects when the girl gets scared. We also made our own scary tune using garage band. One of the members in our group merged certain beats and created an original piece.

Looking back at the preliminary task, what do you think you have learnt from the progression from it to the full task?

In the preliminary task we learnt all the basic aspects of media. We learnt all the different camera angles and point of view shots. The preliminary task was great preparation for the main task. We learnt a big lesson as we made a big mistake; we filmed the preliminary task over two days in which one of our cast had different clothes on to the first day. This shows that we underestimated the detail that goes into filming. We made sure this didn’t happen again on the main task, so we did learn from our mistake. We all as a group gained skills from the first task. We learnt about camera angles, lighting and how to make the end product blend fluently together. The main task felt like a big step up to the preliminary, I remember my teacher pointing out that we made a lot of mistakes after the first filming session, so we went back out to film the same day and corrected those mistakes to ensure that our product reaches a high level that we were all satisfied with. We used a lot more skills in the main task. In parts of our opening scene we slowed the footage down as it made it look more dramatic. Also we used a point of view shot whilst the girl is running to build up the tension and to add to the horror theme we had going on. The mistakes we made first of all was quite basic, for example the girls leading leg does not follow up into the next clip which blatantly standed out. When we first started the main task and our teacher told us it had to be two minutes long we thought it would be easy to fill up that time, but that wasn’t the case. After we cut down each clip we filmed it wasn’t as long as we expected which made us have to rethink about the whole plan we had set. Eventually we decided to add another scene which last around 20 seconds which turned out perfectly as it finished our product to a good standard that we were all happy with.