evaluation

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

From previously analysing two thriller film openings, we had a rough idea of the forms and conventions that
we were to follow or challenge.

Firstly, we followed the conventions by using a blonde and a brunette. In thriller films, it is likely that the
blonde character will die and the brunette will survive, which is what we done in our film opening. It is clear
that the blonde is in trouble because of how we have filmed and edited it, and the brunette character is
shown right at the end of our opening to introduce her.
We also followed the conventions by using an ‘invisible’ stalker, even though he is not shown, but you know
that someone is being watched by him. A film called ‘Firewall’ uses this same convention.
Flashbacks are quite common in thriller films, and we used them to begin our film. To portray the flashbacks,
we converted them into black and white and made the outsides blurred to give the flashbacks more impact.
Using the security camera effect made the film look more thriller like, as it is a convention and is used in
Firewall also.

Challenging the conventions, we used a song with lyrics, though our teachers weren’t sure whether it
worked, we got feedback from other students who thought that the lyrics matched the feel of the film really
well.
How does your media product
represent particular social
groups?

Our media product represents a range of social groups, for example, young blonde women.
Young blondes are almost always portrayed as ‘dumb’, making wrong decisions and would care
more about their appearance than surviving making them rather vulnerable. In some ways, we
haven’t shown blonde women in this light, but we have shown them as more vulnerable than
anything.

We represented young brunette women in a more conventional light; brassy, almost the
protagonist of the film, the one who always survives. Brunettes are usually shown as the more
exciting character in films, they nearly always have good instinct, and will follow them.

Young women in thriller films are shown as the most vulnerable ones, which is how we have also
shown them, as they are captured and tortured.

As we have an ‘invisible’ character, it is still clear that ‘he’ is a stalker. He would come under the
male category which automatically gives him power and dominance. Male characters are
generally the stronger sex during films, and will be the more dominant character.
Who would be your audience
for your media product?
We feel that our target audience would be for men and women our age (16 & 17) to the ages of
around 24 and 25.
We have chosen these ages specifically because we feel as though these are the ages that would
be most interested and attracted to this type of film. Generally, people this age are more into
being scared, and having that build of tension and adrenaline buzz than say children and older
people.

How did you

attract/address your
audience?
We attracted our audience by promoting the film opening on social networking sites e.g.
Youtube and Twitter. This gives thousands of people the chance to watch the opening and get a
feel for the film.
Within ten minutes of posting the link on twitter, we had one response asking if we had the
whole film, and if they could see it.
This was a great thing to have because it meant people of our target audience were interested in
the film we had made.
We posted links on twitter and facebook to tell our audience when and where the video would
be posted to promote it to get the most feedback that we could.
What have you learnt about
technologies from the
process of constructing this
product?
We have learnt that the technologies used to make films, are not as easy they look. Adobe
Premiere Pro is the editing software we had to use, and though the first few times it was really
difficult to get to grips with, we got used to it and it became more familiar with the features.

We also used cameras, which were relatively easy to function, and use but there was nearly
always a problem with sound or people not knowing when to press record!

Making the soundtrack, I used mixcraft, which is a sound editing software, but unfortunately the
‘loop’ effect is really obvious and doesn’t sound great. The programme itself was extremely
vague and confusing to use first time, but during the time I spent on it, I got more used to it and
now I can use it well.

At the beginning of the project we didn’t realise that this project would take so much time and
effort to produce, but generally, I think we have done well in the time we have had.
Unfortunately for us, the journey wasn’t so… simple. We had to have our project moved from
one computer to another, and then the computer we were using almost always froze and
crashed during our lessons.
Looking back at your preliminary task,
what do you feel you have learnt in the
progression from it to the full product?

Our preliminary task is laughable compared to our final project. We have learnt so much about
the technology, time and effort, team work, filming and editing.
Our prelim had basic filming and basic editing which made it quite dull to watch. Since producing
that task, we have progressed dramatically in our ability to produce a decent looking film
opening.
In our prelim we basically only used one camera angle, and barely any edits, it looked stupidly
bare compared to our film now.
04:00 has about 4 different video transitions, many different camera angles, sound effects, video
effects, audio and track volume changing, time codes, more characters and locations, we linked
and unlinked sound to video clips, we imported a soundtrack, we have camera movement.
Just by looking at this list, you can see how much we have learnt since doing the first task, if we
were to do that task now, we would definitely be much more capable of making a decent looking
preliminary task.
Of course, there are things about our final film opening that we would change, like the loop in
the soundtrack, and the second scene at the beginning instead of the end.
Overall, my group and myself are really pleased with what we have accomplished and the
progression from the preliminary task is exceptional.