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

Using
My media product is the opening 2 minutes to a horror film, the first steps once the genre had been chosen was to get a definition of the forms and conventions that are in a horror film the definition I found was:

'Horror Films are unsettling films designed to frighten and panic, cause dread and alarm, and to invoke our hidden worst fears, often in a terrifying, shocking finale, while captivating and entertaining us at the same time in a cathartic experience. Horror films effectively center on the dark side of life, the forbidden, and strange and alarming events. They deal with our most primal nature and its fears: our nightmares, our vulnerability, our alienation, our revulsions, our terror of the unknown, our fear of death and dismemberment, loss of identity, or fear of sexuality'

I then used this definition to base the foundations of my film on to achieve a true horror film by following the conventions of all stereotypical horror genre films. The first convention that I was drawn to by this definition was to ‘invoke our hidden worst fears’ the thought our children being taken away - although through our research and questionnaires we found that our target audience would be older teenagers to young adults and that this image of your children going missing may not be an initial worst fear but one that we can all empathise towards hence why we carried on with the narrative of the children going missing.

This theme of children going missing contains those conventions of a horror ‘terrifying’ especially later on in the narrative when the mother has to chose which child would survive. It also contains the ‘dark side of life’ that something or someone has the ability to take those most innocent – children. At first we concerned that the narrative of our film may not be seen as a horror film but through research many films have also used this theme and have also show these conventions of the ‘dark side of life’ and ‘terrifying’ scenes, showing our film used these conventions of a horror film.

Developing

We then had to put our research into film making and had to use it to develop our film, how we used this definition to adapt our own film to fit in with the horror genre.

Here are screen shots from horror genre films showing a similar theme and conventions to my own film:

Taken – although not fully a horror film but a mixture of suspense and action as well uses the same theme as my film.

This shot here makes the audience aware that someone is there to hurt the two girls.

We then used this foreshadowing technique to make the audience aware that someone is there to hurt the children, by this close up of the gate swinging even though you haven’t seen anyone walk through it showing that someone is there that shouldn’t be.

Another convention that we used of horror films is the ‘vulnerability’ but also


Through the questionnaire the audience likes to see reality, something that could happen to anyone.

We used this to develop our film by having the little girl sing

 To highlight her innocence and how the scenorica is ‘normal’ and could happen to anyone– a common convention of a horror film.

Challenge

I believe that in our film we don’t challenge generic conventions of a horror film because they are set conventions. You need them to make it a horror genre and if you stray away from these it could stop being a horror film, therefore we decided to not challenge these conventions and to make our film the correct genre.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

At a superficial level our film represents middle class, we can tell from the clothing that the children are wearing for example the little girl has a coat on showing wealth to be able to afford such clothing. We followed the stereotypical image that you expect of a middle class school girl; both our actor and stereotypical image are similar.

Stereotypical Middle class children:

Our representation of a middle class child:

Throughout our film the stereotypical image of middle class family is portrayed. It is shown through the house itself, the kitchen in particular has all the gadgets and accessories that one would aspire to have without to many to show excessive wealth.

We kept to what most horror films do, use middle class average citizens so it can easily relate to their audience. This is the reason why we have used this stereotypical middle class family is because of the view that the middle class are ‘normal’ everyday people and by using this status family adds a sense of ‘normal’ and reality to the situation – what audiences like to see realism how the scenario could happen to them too.

We also have represented mothers. We have shown mothers also in the stereotypical image that they look after the children, care and love for them. We chose to do this not because of what we believe women’s roles are but to emphasise the fact that somebody is waiting and worried about where they are.

This is an image of a stereotypical mother, showing the care they have for their children:

This our actor resembling the mother role too and also showing the gadgets and wealth in the kitchen too:

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

After producing my own film if it were to be sold on and distributed to the public and an institution would distribute my film, my film is a horror genre and follows all the generic conventions. By looking at horror films (see below) they are distributed by main stream institutions therefore making my own film a main stream film. I looked at current contemporary films that also attract to the same audience that I am trying to attract to watch my film.


The first film I will look at is The Resident (2011)

This was distributed by Hammer Film Productions which is a British film production that is subsided by Exclusive Media Group. The budget for Resident was $20,000,000 (an estimated value). This shows that most horror films are mainstream films as they can afford to spend a lot of money on films as they know they will attract a lot of people to watch it.

The second film I will look at it What lies beneath

This is distributed by Dream Works SKG and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation which are both huge mainstream institutions they both distribute many of the films that we watch. In 2008 Twentieth century fox won ‘Best Film Marketing (Blockbuster)’ for The Simpsons Movie. It has been around since 1910. Dream Works also is a huge company, it is an American company began in 1994 by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen (forming the SKG present on the bottom of the DreamWorks logo). What Lies Beneath has a budget of $90,000,000 again showing that its horror film will be targeting the main stream audience.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

We decided on our target audience by several measures. The main way was the response we received from our questionnaires the people who we asked were mainly older teenagers to young adults.

 Therefore this was our main target audience. We looked at gender differences and how would both genders respond to out narrative and actual opening, I believe that women will want to watch our film as it is a more psychological horror playing on their darkest fears and their maternal role without huge amounts of blood and gore. However I still do believe that men also will enjoy the film as the narrative later on will become more of an action and possibly a different horror to what they would normally watch but one that buts them on edge and terrified as it plays on the psychological horror not blood and gore.

 

However I believe that after producing our horror film and re watching it that our horror film has flexibility on its target audience because older adults mainly women also may be interested in watching my film as it is on children missing and stereotypically they may have children and could relate to how the mother would be feeling and therefore I think would be interested in watching our film.

Here is a response from an older woman on our film and her opinion on it and if she would watch it:  

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

In order to attract our audience we had to keep to the generic conventions of a horror, as if were to be released to a mainstream film industry. We had to keep to this because they are a mainstream audience and will have expectations of horror films and horror genre is a very constricted genre you cant stray away generic conventions because it will stop being a horror film.

They also know  what should be in them such as playing on false sense of security in the opening it starting off innocently and the scenario very every day and realistic relating how it could happen to them and then things go wrong putting the audience in a state of vulnerability.

These are interviews with my target audience and what they thought of my film and if they would go and watch the rest of the film:

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

Through the process of constructing my film I have learnt about many areas in media and know have a great appreciation of films and cinema and the editing.

Firstly I have learnt about lighting and how such planning has to go into it and how you need to make sure that if any re shooting occurs that the camera must be in the same place and that the scene is exactly the same. I learnt that lighting is greatly important on achieving the mood and atmosphere that you want, and how it can change a piece of filming instantly. For example at the end of our film when there the knock on the door it straight away connoted that something sinister was to occur as the lighting was dark apart from the blue flashing light. I also have learnt about how achieving such lights to imply things is extremely hard, we had create difficulty trying to make a blue flashing light that would connote a police officers light.

I have also learnt a lot about sounds and how they are achieved to add to a film not mask mistakes. We wanted to achieve this and I do believe that our music adds to our film not masking it. I have learnt about how editing sounds into a film is extremely difficult to make sure they make the sound is heard when you wish, while the image is moving. For example when the watch ticks we added the sound over the top and the typewriter effect.

But mostly throughout making my media product I have learnt how editing is so important and can change a films meaning and atmosphere by where you cut a scene. I have such an appreciation for the holly wood editing that is invisible that I admire and we tried to replicate by thing not changing what they were doing or the direction they were in. For example the shot of the girl on the swing and then the close up the swing is in the correct position. An amateur replication of holly wood editing.

Also throughout this process I have learnt how to use editing equipment, for example Final Cut Pro. We learnt how to cut scenes without it looking jumpy, we also learnt how to overlap two shots and how to fade in and out also.

This is a picture of Chloe and I editing our film:

Also throughtout making my film and commenting throughout I have learnt how to blog and use Blogger. Through blogger I have learnt how to get clips from Youtube and use them on my blog, also I have learnt how to upload picutres - and overcome issues such as not having enough space. Blogger has helped me to show my work in the most interactive creative way.

7. Look back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt on the progression from it to the full product?

I believe that my main progression from the preliminary task to my main task was the improvement in continuity and editing. At first in my preliminary task the actors seemed to move slightly or the camera would jolt slightly, all though not massively , it is enough to put of the audience. This was my main aim for my film, that there would be solid continuity between scenes so its invisble you almost don't even know that it has occured - like there is in Holly wood films.
Editing also has been a great progression from the preliminary to the main task, at first in the preliminary it was my first time at using the Final Cut Pro software, I was hesitant to cut too much of scenes and the effect of this was the scenes were slightly jolty and continuity was affected. However in the main task the editing was far better, I had knowledge of how to use the software and to cut scenes to make the editing untraceable like the 'hollywood editing'.

Here is a shot from my preliminary that shows how the continuity is not quite accurate:

Where as you can see the improvement into my main task, here is the continuity of the girl swinging, she is in the correct place that she should be.  The swing is in the correct place, she hasn't somehow jolted to another place showing that my editing and continuity has improved from my preliminary task to main task -  almost 'hollywood editing' style:

I have learnt from my preliminary task to my main task the importance of planning before filming. When we did our preliminary we planned minimally naively not understanding how vital is to plan. When we went to film we found that weren't sure what to film first and the order that we were going in, it ended up taking a great deal longer than it should have. So, when we made our opening of the film, we took a long time detailing what would be happening in each shot and how long for so when went out and filmed we were far more efficient and got everything that we had planned too.


These our are story boards for our main task: