Evaluation

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

The setting of our film is rather unconventional. This becomes apparent to the audience in the very first few seconds of the film as the establishing shot shows an empty playground.  The entire opening of the play, in fact, is set in one location. A playground. There are no well known horror films that have this setting. This is because playgrounds tend to be associated with happiness and innocent joy rather than the thrill and fear the audience seeks. Because of this, our film has challenged the convention of a scary and isolated location that is so often very important in films. However,  if used in the right way, a seemingly innocent setting such as this can also provide the trill of doubt; because it is such an unusual place to associate horrors with, the audience is lulled in to a sense of false security and experience shock when it’s revealed that the upcoming murderers will happen in such an unexpected place. There are some films wich also play with the audience in this way. For example, the horror paranormal activity, is mostly set in a house, with most of the action playing out in a bedroom. Because the audience would usually not consider such a place scary or threatening other conventions have to be followed in order for the film to become scary.

In the group, we decided that we would follow the convention of a tension building music in the background of the vast majority of the film.  The music is quiet unnerving, it creates tension while the film is being watched because such music is largely associated with films which aim to scare the audience like horrors and thrillers. However, we developed this further by adding a different track for when the action is being carried out on the screen. It prompts the audience to become more excited and anxious as the beat is a lot faster. It is used to create thrill rather than tenseness like eerie music.  The convention of such music is extremely important in horror films because it manifests the emotional reactions of the audience in a way the film could never accomplish on its own.  Some widely known horror tracks are the ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ theme, the ‘Saw’ theme and of course ‘Jaws’ theme song. They all contain some form of eerie sounds and start off slowly only to build the tempo up at one point or another. The slowly paced music inspired us to pick the track we used for the main background theme of our final product.

   As in most horror films, the main villain figure is expected to look frightening. There are three main ways in which films follow the convention of a creepy villain. They are either deformed, they’re not human or wear masks/disguises. Our group has decided on the latter. Our villain, The Child Collector, wears a mask which looks like a face of a scarred baby. The idea to wear a mask was inspired by films like Saw and It. However, we develop this convention further by the fact that characters that the audience find most scary are often children and so we chose as mask which would tick off both of these things. In this way the villain instantly becomes even more scary because not only is the face invisible to the audience, but it is creepy to see someone with the face of a baby committing a murder.

The typical characters which become the victims are teenagers and females. They are considered the most vulnerable and the audience is largely made up of teenagers which increases the fear factor because the audience might think ‘that could be me!’ which makes all the more fun to watch the film. We followed this convention in a way. We decided to make the film a 15, and therefore (in the majority of the film) the victim is a boy whose age is around 15-17; although in the opening it’s his younger self and his older sister whose also around 17 years of age. This follows the convention because the victim is rather vulnerable and naïve, but doesn’t at the same time because it’s a male whose not considered as vulnerable. Despite this, it is still a popular choice for the victim.

   Another convention which we followed was the convention of colouring. It became apparent to us while we were searching for logo inspirations that many logos from companies that created horror films used the red, white, black colour scheme or other dark colours such as blue with light accents. We therefore followed this convention and our logo is made of only white, black and red. Those colours are used because they each connote things associated with horror. The white is the innocent victim, the red is associated with blood and violence and the black witch the villain figure. Our title is also based on this colour scheme. The background is black, the title is white and there is blood dripping down the screen. We hoped that the large amount of blood rolling down the screen would foreshadow that the film will contain more violence further on as we didn’t not wish to have much in our opening scene. We wanted to make it apparent that there will be blood because violence and gore are one of the more obvious conventions expected in horror films. Even the psychological ones.

   However there are also conventions which we did not manage to follow, not because we wanted to challenge it and take a different outlook on it, but rather because of inconvenience during the production part of the task. The flashback during the opening has some action in it. In horrors, a convention that is important for creating a tense and scary atmosphere is darkness. It is most important for it to be dark suring the action or just before it as the rension is building up. In the flashback however, it is still rather dark and even editing could not provide us with the expected lighting. Therefore we broke the convention of darkness.

Overall, we used most conventions in order to create tension, however challenging the convention of isolated and scary setting as well as braking the convention of darkness could provide to be a problem in making the tense atmosphere we initially wished to create. Developing the convention of the right kind of music by mixing two different tracks expected by the audience fixes that problem a fair bit however. Also the use of blood during the title scene would encourage the audience to carry on watching the film in order to see the action.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The protagonist of the film is a teenage boy called Josh. Josh is a very typical teenager who is most likely representing the middle class. He is of white ethnic background and is English. Those characteristics make Josh a very average young person as well as the most likely person who would be watching the film. At the end of the opening, it is apparent that Josh has went through a very traumatic experience when he was younger witnessing his sister being murdered by a very creepy figure. This presents Josh as well as their teenagers as vulnerable.  Josh is also openly scared of going back in to the park making it clear he wants to stay out of trouble. This is what we thought would be the most typical portrayal of a British teenager, one that looks after his wellbeing but doesn’t strand from including himself from social interaction even after the experience.

Josh has two friends who are both girls. One is also English but one has an accent. This represents the changing society in which there are many immigrants. The three quite obviously get along representing that there is no conflict; although there is some for example when the girl calls Josh immature because he’s scared of coming in the park.

In the film all of our characters are white and we do not explore religion in the opening and it is doubtful that the film would do so if we were to film the rest of it. Therefore the three teenagers’ religious backgrounds are left to interpretation from their behaviours. This however could represent that younger people are not as focused on things such as religion as they are on other things such as their social life (considering that the teens ore out at a park).

There is minimal focus on age in our product too. The younger version of Josh refused to go home in favour of playing on the swings. This represents young boys as childish and playful and not listening to authority. 

We did not take in to consideration whether the representation of the teenagers is conventional or not. However the teenagers are quite average from middle class and horrors often tend to have people who are average so that the audience can sympathise with them. If the teenagers were obviously from the higher class, were homosexual and put their education before their social life it would be unconventional and harder for the audience to sympathise with the characters.

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

Our film is a horror. It includes a masked character and would later include blood and violence. It is a 15 which mean that it cannot include too much gore as otherwise it would most likely be more suitable for audiences over the age of 18.

A well-known institution known for producing and distributing horror films is the ‘Twisted Pictures’ company. It is an independent company known for the Saw franchise. The company would be suitable as it specialises in horror films and is relatively knew having produced its first film Saw in only 2004. This would be good as our product would also be new and it would have a shot at being distributed by the company if it was made professionally with professional equipment and actors. However, Twisted Pictures is an American production company and our product would have been British which would produce a problem with them distributing our product. Also the films the company have produced so far are mostly for adult audiences and they might not want to restrict their reputation of gory films by distributing a film aimed at a slightly younger audience which would have a lot less gore and bloody action it.

A better choice of company would be the Warner Brothers Pictures. They are also an American company, however they are extremely well known and produce and distribute films of all genre for all types of audiences. Despite being an American company, WB have distributed many British films, for example the Harry Potter franchise. On top of this, WB do put money in to smaller projects.  They might have taken interest in producing a film such as The Collection Day because it’s new and would come from a new company which holds potential.  If they were to distribute our film they might have done so through one of their smaller divisions which specialises in horror films such as the Dark Castle Entertainment which is known for producing films such as the Orphan.

This company would also be great because their films range from big blockbuster films to small independent films. As our film is independent it would fit into the types of films they produce and if it were to be successful the company might then consider to put in more money in to the next project. If it was not, then we could just carry on with having a smaller budget. However, because the film would be distributed by such a well known company, it would attract a larger audience which would be good for producers who are just starting out.

4.Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience of our film would be limited due to the age restriction. Any member of the audience would have to be over the age of 15 in order to enjoy our product. This however means that instead of having aspects in the film both adults and children can enjoy, we could focus on what the target audience enjoys. The target audience consisting mainly of teenagers and young adults.

The audience of our film would be both males and females, however because of the film lacking explicit portrayal of gore which many younger males look for, it would be expected that those type of hard-core horror fans would be lacking in our audience. This means however that more squeamish people, such as girls, could enjoy this film instead.

People of all ethnic backgrounds could enjoy this film, however it has to be taken in to consideration that the protagonist is English and all other support characters are also Caucasian which would mean that people of ethnic minority might not wish to watch the film. On the other hand, The Child Collector is never seen from under his mask (at least in the opening) so there is no reason as to why he might not be Asian, dark skinned or other.

In my opinion, the majority of the audience will be from either the working or middle class. I think this is because our main characters are most likely to be from the middle class and so their actions are influenced by this. This means that the audience can sympathise with how they come about dealing with the events unfolding in the film.

In conclusion, the film is targeted at young people from the middle class of any gender or ethnicity leaning forward Caucasian people simply because the protagonist is also white. This does not mean however that other people not specifically in the target audience would not enjoy the film.

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6?. What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product.

There are several useful things I have learned to do with media technologies while carrying out the tasks. Firstly, I have learned how to Blog as it is something I have never done before. While using Blogger, I learned how to post and edit posts, add pictures and even imbed videos and short clips from YouTube (preliminary task) and videos imported from Premiere (short clips of film opening).

The filming process itself has made me aware of how you can use a camera in different ways through different options. For example making the film more steady even while walking or adjusting brightness.

However, I gained a lot of knowledge on film editing through Premiere. Initially, I had trouble even understanding the meaning of words such as render, but over the course of the weeks we had to edit the film, I learned just how much you can change the clip you have filmed through endless effects. It was also the most enjoyable part of the entire filming/ editing process as I was able to experiment with all of the different effects for both video and sound clips. The most advanced bit of editing I have managed was when I used the ‘4 colour’ effect to darken the sky. It involved a lot of time and required a lot of changes within just one effect such as changing the effect from ‘normal’ to ‘darken’ so that it would overlap more with the clip as well as changing the colours to white and dark blue. It was very a helpful effect to use for our film and arguably, the most advanced thing I have learned to do in the Premiere software.

As a group we have also used other sorts of things like the possibility of using a green screen which we did not add in our final product, as well as using cameras to record voiceovers for our clip and just leaving the audio for the film. We used other more basic sites such as PowerPoint to create out logo, and used a simple site on Google which swapped two pictures over and over to make the logo appear as if it was flashing.

Because we worked in a group of three, everyone gained mostly the same skills, but also some different ones which may have limited our knowledge. We didn’t use the AdobeFlashPlayer like some groups have, however due to my new acquired skills with Premiere I have gave a few pointers to another group which I would have never been able to do if we haven’t been given this task.

7. Looking back at your preliminary tasks what do you think you have learned in the progression from it to the full project?

I have worked with different people during the two filming processes. In the first one I have mostly presented ideas and worked the camera because I was not skilled in anything else. However, in the group for the proper film opening, we have shared all of the tasks equally, from simple things like planning the plot, to directing and camera work. As in the first group, we disagreed on some of the things when it came down to editing, we weren’t sure which clips to place where and how long they should last. However, rather than becoming aggravated, we managed to form some form of a conclusion during each disagreement, and we shared the mouse for rather equal parts of time so that everyone could present their ideas fully. This was a big step from how my other group has behaved in the preliminary project where we didn’t seem to be able to handle team-work. Working with Abi and Emily has taught me how working as a whole can be a lot more productive than individual work, which I prefer. In the end, the agreement to share every task equally, and discussing everything between ourselves has proven to be rewarding as we have created a much more interesting and enjoyable film that we have in the other group. On top of that, the groups also have helped each other a lot more than in the preliminary task, making the editing process flow even better due to the help everyone received.

Working with the cameras has not been a challenge in either of the filming tasks. However, because of the different plots of the films we used different tactics. While in the preliminary task we strictly followed the 180* rule, we didn’t worry about it while filming The Collection Day as the film is a sort of a psychological horror and the added confusion helps in creating the correct mood the audience should feel. However, I believe that my camera work has become a lot smoother the second time around. While initially we had take a lot of retakes of the simplest of shots, while working on TCD there wasn’t so much need of retaking shots.