Project Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? My media product uses, develops or challenges forms and conventions by sticking to a tight set of rules that most thriller style films should use to make an ominous, suspense-packed film. I think we achieved this in our film through music and how the shadowy figure was displayed.
For example we used crescendos in our non-diegetic music track to signify that something dangerous/mysterious was about to happen. This creates tension. A lot of films in the thriller style use this nowadays, a famous example is the movie "JAWS" in which before the shark is seen on camera it plays a deep bass track which shows something bad is close to happening. This scares the audience as the audience are left, with their mind trying to predict what is going to happen, and more important when it is about to happen. If this device is used correctly and for the right amount of time it can create a great amount of suspense.
We also used imagery, for example with a dark character being drawn to show the more alert viewers what figure/character could possibly appear later in the film. This is also shown in the film "JAWS", because the audience know there is a shark, but it is not seen. Giving the shark a omnipresence. Thus we developed this by showing the drawings of the "bad" Character.

How does your media product represent particular social groups? Our media product represents social outcasts or people with mental problems/difficulties. Particularly schizophrenia. Our film is about a paranoid schizophrenic who imagines a dark figure haunting him. We represnt this through, most apparent, the dark figure outside his window. But we also slot it in by showing him drawing this dark figure he imagines. We think this represents this person with mental difficulties through erratic/out-of-the norm behaviour, such as drawing violently fast, but also through the use of medication.

This brings me to the title of our film "Clozapine" we took this name because, after research, we found out this was a medication for hallucinogenic schizophrenia which made it even more fitting as a film title. We also used a technique in our film, where he looks out side of the window, sees a figure, then he double takes and looks outside again, and the figure is there. I think that this challenges his perception of reality, as he has to double take what he's seen just to check if it was real or not. This also allows the audience to think if the figure in the dark was real or not.


What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? 
I think a media institution such as a video hosting website would be the best for distributing my media product. I think this for several reasons:

• Video hosting websites such as YouTube allow you to present media in a professional way and host it for free. It also allows it to be viewed for free.
• It is not upto standard for any other distribution processes, such as TV or DVD because of lack of advertisement and production value.
• As video hosting is free, it's free publicity. Allowing my project (a 2-3 minute opening of a thriller movie) to gain viewers/interest which would overall gain interest for the finished product.

Alternatively, my media product could be used as a trailer for my full length film, this would be played before a movie in the cinemas, or before a movie on a dvd/video. This would gather interest for the film as a whole. And I believe that my 2-3 minute beginning of a thriller film would bring enough attention from the suspense/mystery created to have people interested in watching the full length film.

Who would be the audience for your media product? We aimed our Media product at people around the age range of 16-25. This was not set in stone and concrete as there could be certain exceptions to this. I felt that the fast pace at times and general characteristics of the main character fitted a younger audience more than an older. 

• We found out that many psychological thrillers were targeted towards people aged 18+, though we decided to target our film towards a slightly younger age of 16+
• The reason why our group decided to change our target audience was because we researched other successful psychological thrillers such as ‘Final Destination’ and realized that it attracted interesting commentary from the teenage society as young as 16.
• Furthermore, these films did not include any real explicit content in the film, it was largely based on violence, deception, betrayal. Such themes are typical of a psychological thriller movie. Because our film was based on a younger audience, violence was harder to show, and thus we cut it out from our film.

I also looked into the rating certificate rules for a 15+ film, our film follows these rules, and thus can be marketed to our target audience.

Discrimination:No endorsement of discriminatory language or behaviour will be present in the film.Drugs:In the film drugs are permitted to be viewed but in no way must they be promoted to the audience or make the audience want to experience the taking of these drugs. Also its unlikely to be acceptable to show dangerous substances that are accessible to the audience being used incorrectly, for example mis-use of aerosols or solvents.Horror:The audience are allowed to see strong threat and menace, however not if carried out in a sexualised or sadistic way.Imitable Behaviour:Any viewings of behaviour dangerous to the character (for example, hanging, suicide and self-harming) are not allowed to be shown in great detail to promote ideas to the audience of this behaviour.Language:Strong language is acceptable to be used frequently, (for example 'fuck') however the strongest terms (for example 'cunt') are only permitted to used if it fits the context and can be justified by this. However when the use of strong language is repeated in an aggressive way its unlikely to be acceptable for this certification.

How did you attract/address your audience? The Genre of our assignment we chose was a "Psychological Thriller", in order to portray our chosen Genre there was many aspects we had to take into consideration such as the use of music, similarities with other movies and we had to include a unique selling point of our film. Music has a massive impact on the genre of a film, without it, it would be much more difficult to set the mise en scene and build tension for the audience. The music we chose to incorporate into our film was an eerie sounding track which encompassed the silence and loneliness of our film.  We felt it had an awkward quality, and enlarged the tension of the drama we were trying to create.  There are many films that inspired us when planning our own film opening, and we tried to integrate several techniques and ideas we received from the research we carried out, such as Se7en, Final Destination series and Shutter Island. By making films in the style of these popular thrillers, thus attracting the audience.


What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? From the start of making our preliminary and media product, I have learnt how to use film editing software (such as Final Cut Pro), Cameras and Lighting. From editing I learnt how to take footage straight from the video camera and transfer it to the computer via a FireWire, then learnt how to cut up seperate clips, render them, and then try a series of trial and error of each shot to make an overall good film from the clips, I also learnt how to render, compress and add text over the video which faded in/out.
For using the Cameras I learnt how to use zooms effectively to not look choppy and give a steady professional look to the footage. Lighting was also very important to our film and utilizing it gave it a professional look as well as using the cameras quality to its fullest.


Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? After watching my preliminary task once it was finished, my immediate first reaction was that we had to improve our full product above the standard of the preliminary to obtain a good mark. This was for varying reasons:

• Our preliminary was shot in dark lighting, from first impressions when we started filming it we thought this was a great idea because it would give a mysterious/shady look to it, on further revision after uploading it to edit it we decided it was a terrible idea. This was because it made the camera quality drop significantly, showing grainy footage and pulling the camera out of focus.
• The sound quality was very bad, and for some unknown reason (probably our fault) it unsync'd thus rendering it unusable. There was also some interference giving it a static underlay.

With this in our mind we set off to create our full 2-3 minute film with the aim of using much stronger lighting to create a higher quality shot, coupled with higher audio quality. We learnt also that filming requires time to set up, and that taking as many shots is invaluable to creating a diverse and interesting final product to view. Another important thing we learnt was making each shot a few seconds longer at the start and end, as in our preliminary we would cut our shots a little to early, thus making them unusable, where if you film a bit more on the start and end you will not have any problems with the clip ending too early.