Evaluation

Here is each of our evaluations, here each member of the group has analysed what they think about the film we have produced and whether it is successful and meets our target audience.

Amy Cooper : Media Coursework Foundation Portfolio Evaluation

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of media products?
The way in which our film is able to use the typical conventions of the thriller genre is firstly by looking at the technical aspects. In our film, we include close up of characters, looking to the photo of the girl. Typical camera movements include tracking where the girl is on the phone to her friend. These are typical conventions of the thriller genre. In terms of editing, we include the graphical match of when we introduce another character. We also use quick cutting to increase the rythym and the pace of when the girl is getting kidnapped, however at the beginning of the film, the editing is slower when we build up to the kidnapping. Our film also includes a flashback to when the girl is kidnapped when we have the screen fading to white and the title screen introducing when the kidnapping had taken place. This idea was taken from the urban thriller film London to Brighton in which we are introduced with a time and location.
In terms of genre and sub genres, we do meet with typical conventions of a thriller genre. Typical style of a thriller and its themes, with a thriller you get the themes of stalking , voyenism and obsessions which is what our film was about about a man who was obsessed and stalked many women. We do not develop or challenge this and therefore it makes our film seem more like a thriller. If we were to challenge this then it would risk it taking away from the thriller genre if we were to challenge this.
And this is the same for characters, we have the male characters as people who are the stalkers and the females as being the damsel in distress. These again are typical to the thriller like historical films such as psycho and therefore, makes it more successful
These are all typical conventions of the thriller and these are the ways that we use the conventions in our film. In our film we do use camera angles in innoative ways, in two sections we have point of view, where the kidnapper is hiding behind the bushes looking at the girl, and the girls point of view when she is placed into the boot and the car door is closed on her. Apart from this, I do not believe that our film challenges or develops any of the typical conventions of the thriller. These typical conventions of thriller do fit in with both historical and contemporary. For example , by looking at historical thrillers by Alfred Hitchcock we see that they have the traditional thriller conventions. More contemporary thrillers would have issues such as terrorists and bomb explosions. By looking at our film, I think that our film fits in more with the historical thriller as we do not challenge or develop any of the thriller conventions such as a contemporary thriller would do. We made sure that the film had stayed within the genre of thriller and not being combined with horror by not adding deatures of extreme gore and violence and zombies which is sub genres and devices used in horror. that are meant to scare or distub the audience. Also soundtrack was an important device, a soundtrack we had used before made it seem more like a horror and from audience feedback, we were able to change it something that was more tense that a thriller would have that left the audience on the edge of their seat.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
In terms of gender, we see that the female character is the more weaker and vunreable. And again we don’t challenge or develop this by having a male as the weaker character. In terms of age, we have made our characters in their teenage years and the kidnapper as being older as he drives a car, this makes it seem that the character being kidnapped is more vunereable making it seem like a thriller. In our film, we do not represent any ethnic minorities or token characters as your characters are all white. If we were to make our thriller more contemporary we would have to have a range of characters of different ethnicities. In terms of social status and class, our kidnapper is someone who is seen as low in class and with mental health as he is obsessed. Our girl getting kidnapped represents the vunereable youth and the 2 other male characters represent the criminal type of people in society today. Many of our representations do not challenge our thriller film.

3. What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why ?
If we were to define our thriller film, our thriller film would be seen as an independent film, due to using school equipment and the overall quality of the film being quite dark giving the film a dark and gritty style. It can be distributed to place that release independent films such as the arthouse and BFI. This could then possibly lead to our film being shown at film festivals such as London and Sundance for our film to gain distribution., however I think that our film would be best suited as something that is shown over the internet and community tv and as due to its low budget and lack in finished quality.

4. Who would the audience be for your media product?
From referring back to our research and planning on out film and film classifications, thrillers were seen as classification of an 18 and 15. In my opinion, I do not feel that our film is a 15 and that is more of 12a, our film does definitely have themes of a thriller and serious issues which is what is within the 12a category. By looking at the context of a 15, it is more serious in the issues delivers as it does have elements of gore and violence. Our film does not really have any violence in but does have serious themes so I felt we could have met up to the classification more for it to meet with the target audience and classification.

5. How did you address your audience ? How did you construct your film to make it appeal to your target audience, what conventions did you specifically include to achieve this ?
In terms of audience, our film was targeted at 16-25 year old's. Conventions that we had specifically included in this was to add characters of young ages within this age group. Also the conventions of stalking and voyeurism is what ‘teen’ thrillers are commonly based around so it makes it more realistic to our audience age group. From the audience feedback we received, we were able to construct our film by making it more clear when our flashback of kidnapping had taken place and we had changed the score that went through our film as it was something more described as being like ‘halloween’ rather than a thriller. We were able to make these changes to make it more successful with our audience.

6. What have you learnt about techniques?
From this coursework, I have learnt many different techniques, firstly using new equipment. These include D.V cameras and tripods. These lacked in quality but gives films or television programmes a sense of realism. In comparison to films that are filmed via celluloid which are programmes such as hollyoaks, this makes it seem an illusion of reality and an idea of perfection.

With the cameras also had sound and microphones but they did lack in quality, we had overcame this problem by having less dialouge in the opening scene allowing for ambient sounds to be heard and for the little dialouge had to be easily heard for the audience. The main editing software that we had used In this project was imovie, a software that comes with the macs. The imovie programe is a none-linear editing software meaning that rushes of film can be cut and pastes over and over again. I think that non-linear editing effects our movie as some parts do not meet with out storyboard. The quick change to her kidnapping , the cutting of it is slighty different as we have added more cuts into that section instead of the boot door just closing on the character to the process of her being forced into the car . Ultimately, this had allowed us in further editing, to further stress that this scene was a flashback as to show she was kidnapped.
It is also through the whole coursework that I have learnt different skills. Firstly blogging, a new way of presenting coursework was definitely a challenge as sometimes, posts would not get published or would be deleted however it was a good way of presenting our groups work.Also using the internet for general research, youtube in terms of video research and again for general research.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progession from it to the full product.
I think from the preliminary task, I feel that I have learnt more about editing and camera shots and angle and where to carefully place a camera. For example the 180 degree rule, this is something that we had made many mistakes in the preliminary task however , made sure in ou full product that this was included. I think in comparison to our main task, the preliminary task is very basic as we were given set things to do such over the shoulder and match on action, in the main task we were able to use more of a variety of shots requiring more thinking over what would work best and also make a good thriller opening. I think that our organisation was more improved and my group definitely became more focussed as we were able to meet deadlines when asked. Problems that we had encountered was with the software, where some scenes would be deleted or the software would go through the process lettering which wasn’t meant to happen.