Evaluation

Aimie Condon
 In what ways does your media product use,
develop or challenge forms and conventions of
real media products?
• Our media product “Leyla” uses forms and
conventions of real media products because we reflect
our genre of a psychological thriller. Thrillers tend to
use quick paced editing and camera angle changes
which we used in our opening 2 minutes and also use
familiar settings but ones which may make viewers
feel uncomfortable, so for example being lost or
confused in a forest like our opening shows.
• We developed forms and conventions of real media
products as we used Ferdinand de Saussure’s idea of
signifiers and the signified to represent our teenage
girls typical day. We used shots of her using
“Facebook” on a laptop, driving in a car with a teenage
boy, in a park and using makeup which are all
signifiers of a teenage girls life.
• We challenged the forms and conventions of a
psychological thriller in our media product as we do
not have many dark or shadowy shots. We also have a
voice over rather than fast tension music that is
usually associated with the thriller genre.
 How does your media product represent
particular social groups?
• Our film opening represents the social groups of vulnerable teenage girls.
• Our main character who is shown laying on the floor of the forest is wearing the
costume of a typical teenage girl in high heels and tights, but the tights also show
her vulnerability as they are ripped which indicates she has been in some sort of
struggle.
• “Leyla” also represents villains in the opening of the film with the possibility of the
young girl running into the phonebox and the young boy driving the car being
baddies as you do not know the rest of the story yet.
• We represented these villains by not fully showing their whole appearance. The
girl in the phone box had her hood up and ran, suggesting she is getting away from
something quickly and the boy is only quickly shown in the car mirror so you can
only see his eyes.
 What kind of media institution might distribute
your media product and why?
• We would hope that our media product
would be distributed by a company such as
“New Line” as, although they distribute
films of all budgets and genres, they
specialise in independent films and are a
big well known and respected distributor.
• Some of the films that have been
produced, co produced or distributed by
New Line which are of a similar genre to
ours are:
Se7en (1995)
Final Destination (2000)
The Number 23 (2007)
The Butterfly Effect 2 (2006)
 “”Who would be the audience for your media
product?
• The target audience for our media products is teenagers and from
reading the BBFC guidelines, due to the content of our film it would
be classified as a 15 rating.
• This rating would allow teenagers and any adults if interested to
watch our film and would appeal to a wider audience than if our
film was rating any higher as an 18.
• Some other films of a similar genre to ours are also rated at a 15
such as Donnie Darko, The Butterfly Effect, Phone booth and The
Sixth Sense.
• Our film is not gender specific and could be viewed by people of
both genders.
 How did you attract/address your audience?
• As our film is targeted at teenagers we thought
that by using a teenage girl as our main character
this would make teenagers want to watch our film
as the character is someone that they may be able
to relate to and understand some of the events
happening in her life throughout the film.
• The flash backs in our film also represents a day of
a typical teenager for example social networking
sites on a laptop, driving a car which is normally a
new exciting thing for teenagers and applying
makeup.
• All of our flashbacks are also realistic things which
happen in everyday life which would also appeal
to our audience because they can relate to it. On
the other hand however, the fact that we start
with a character waking up in a forest, this also
adds something new and surreal into a film and
from our questionnaires that we conducted at the
beginning of our course, we found that people like
to watch films that takes them out of everyday life
and experience something that would not
normally happen to them.
 What have you learnt about technologies from
the process of constructing this product?
• From making our 2 minute film opening I have learnt a lot about
technologies that I did not know about at the beginning of the course. The
whole process was a lot more simple than I first thought and after
practising with the camera around the school and with our preliminary
exercise I found that it was quite easy to create really effective interesting
shots and viewpoints with the camera by either using different positions
on the tripod or by using the camera handheld.
• We also discovered when filming that it would be better to film all of the
footage in a normal colour mode and then edit the colours and add
effects with post production techniques afterwards.
• I also learnt a lot of skills when editing our film using iMovie on the Macs.
I learnt how to add effects onto our film for example making it black and
white and also editing it for continuity purposes, for example by
whitening the sky to take away the clouds that may mess up the
continuity of our shots. I also learnt to cut up bits of our film and put them
together to make them fit together well and look like they were filmed
continuously together.
• Another skill I learnt in the process of making our film is using Garage
Band. Although our film does not have a continuous song playing through
it, we still had to use it to record our voice over and edit it to distort some
of the words that we wanted.
 Looking back at your preliminary task, what do
you feel you have learnt in the progression from
it to the full product?
• From making our preliminary task video, this helped us progress to make
our proper 2 minute film opening because it allowed us to fully
understand the 180 degree rule.
• We also understood the importance planning and storyboarding from our
preliminary task because to make your schedule successful you must
follow your storyboard carefully.
• We learnt the importance of different camera angles to make our film
more interesting rather than focussing on just one shot and also about the
importance of continuity in the mise en scene for example characters
costumes and props used.