Zoe Collins

Planning of Evaluation

Here I have briefly planned what im going to inlcude in my Evaluation PowerPoint.

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

Before filming my opening sequence I watched a thriller film called ‘The Children’, I found this film rather gory with a great twist to the story of the children attacking their parent. I decided to not include the gory aspect of some thriller conventions into my opening sequence because I wanted to aim for a younger audience and to aim more at the bullying aspect that a lot of children go through during their teenage years.

in my thriller opening sequence I tried to capture the mystery conventions of a thriller by using point of view shots to begin with so we do not see the character to build a suspense and an air of anonymity of the character. The only sound we can hear to begin with is the breathing of the character as they walk down the stairs and out the front door on their way to school.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In my media product it focuses on bullying and the stereotyping that occurs between different social / peer groups. It represents the typical bullying ‘chav’ and the innocent school pupil that gets picked on for simply looking at the ‘chav’.

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

- The type of media institution that might distribute my media product would be a film institution that distributes other films of a similar genre and target audience, therefore the correct audience would be aware of my media product and it wouldn’t be advertised to the wrong type of audience.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for my media product would be from age 12 and above and who enjoy mild thrillers.

How did you attract/address your audience?

I watched a horror film, ‘The Children’, which was a certificate 18 and I found it extremely frightening and gory therefore decided that my film wasn’t going to be aimed at that audience. I used teenage actors and used bullying as the main point of the film which I feel young teenagers can relate to.

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

Before producing this opening sequence I had never used a video camera before. I’ve learnt the different types of shots and camera angles that you can produce with a video camera. I learnt how to use Serif Movie Plus software and the different applications that come with it such as effects like fade and black and white and cutting clips. I’ve learnt how to create a blog and upload different posts and video clips.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

During filming my preliminary task, I learnt all the different types of camera shots and angles that I can involve to create different scenes, I also learnt how to use the camera on a tripod to keep the shot steady. However when it came to filming my main task I felt that I didn’t need the tripod as I wanted the first few scenes to be from the characters eye shot and point of view therefore the tripod wouldn’t work on this occasion. I’ve learnt how to be a director, for my preliminary task I wasn’t actually in the film because I had the appropriate actors as I filmed it in school. But when it came to filming my main task I thought I would also try acting in my own film as well as directing it to get the best experience from producing my film. I’ve also learnt how to write a production diary and evaluate my own work.

Construction - Editing

Once we had completed the filming, we then had to start editing the film. The process of this was as follows.
Firstly we transferred the film from the camera onto the computer and onto the Serif software. The next stage was to save my film as soon as it had be transferred onto the computer incase any technical faults were to occur my film would still be saved. The clips were already in chronological order so I had to watch the whole of our film including the out-takes to see how it had all come out. I then had to split and cut the clips to delete the out-takes of Yasmin and I laughing at different stages during filming, we had also filmed the walking down the street scene quite a few times to get the timing correct therefore I had to delete the clips we decided weren't needed, keeping in mind that the thriller was to last a maximum of two minutes. There were a couple of sudden jumps in-between shots so i used a fade effect, to ease in the transaction of the shots. I had had some experience using different effects such as black and white and fade when editing my Preliminary Task.
Once i had finished editing the film I needed to add some opening credits to my film, I thought long and hard for a title that would be appropriate for my film. A couple of titles i thought were, 'The Bully' and 'Missing Friend', I then decided on 'Where's She Gone?'. I thought using a question as a title was quite clever because in a way it involves the audience into the film from the very beginning. Once again I had already had a little experience in creating a title for my Preliminary Task, 'Assassination'.

Research into a Thriller Film

As research for filming i watched a film called, 'The Children' by Tom Shankland who also directed popular horror movie 'W delta Z'.
In the film 'The Children', its christmas time and the family get together but their children one by one get infected by this disease that minipulates their minds and turns then into murders, they begin turning on their parents slowly to bring the film to a climax. The teenage young girl is the first to realise that the children aren't well and tries to convince the parents that the reason all these horrific events are happening is because of the children. But its hard for the parents to believe that their children would ever do such a thing, until they let their children get too close and are victims of their sick games.

After watching 'The Children' (certificate 18), I decided that following the exact thriller conventions of this film were going to be far too gory for the audience i was aiming for ('12' or '15' rating). It was a very shocking and jumpy film which i thought was too extreme for my idea of my film.

Production Report of Main Task

The members of my group for my film are Yasmin Mehrad and myself. We decided not to give each other specific roles when filming because neither of us had much experience, so we decided to give acting, filming, editing and planning a try. However i took more of a directing role for my opening sequence and Yasmin was the main actor. We didn't plan set days to meet and discuss the planning for my film as we are in the same Media A-Level class so it was easy for us to make time during the school day to talk about our ideas for my opening sequence. We thought about using different sound effects and non-diegetic music for my opening sequence but decided that we would just use natural surrounding diegetic sounds such as the breathing when walking and cars as they drove past. We had previously watched 'The Children', a recent thriller movie by Tom Shankland who as a media class we actually went and interviewed at his London studio and got a full account of his planning and shooting of the film. This film included diegetic sounds such as heavy breathing and silent movements from the actors and non-diegetic sounds such as high screeches as the children began to change into murderers. These non-diegetic sounds were good for this type of gory film, however i felt they were unneccessary for mine opening sequence. Yasmin and myself decided that an appropriate location for filming would be my house and my street as it had all that we needed, this was an easy location to use as we had permenant access to it and was a simple place to film and meet. I wanted to film to be in daylight which was an easy time to film and didn't have any complications of dark lighting. Yasmin was dressed in her school uniform to show that she was on her way to school, and i was dressed in a casual tracksuit to show that i wasn't attending school and tried to label myself as a 'chav'. Dressing in this costume was following the stereotypes that bullies are labeled with nowadays. The target audience will be from age 12 and above as they will be able to relate to the bullying side of the film. My film also isn't very horrific and gory as most horror movies therefore it can be aimed at a younger audience.

Final Cut of Main Task