Overall Evaluation.

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

Our final product both develop and counteract typical conventions of real media products. It is the conventions that attract the audience into watching the film from the start, so matching this is important within our own film that we made. Our genre (psychological thriller) is not one that is frequently released, however it is one that remains popular; especially with our chosen demographic of 18-25 year olds. However, due to the vast amount of conventions that are associated with this genre, we had to make sure that our film remained original and did not become predictable for our audience. We considered altering the scenes and shots when it came to the editing process, and we did this by the use of a split screen half way through our sequence. By doing this, it creates a contrast compared to the other average eye level shots. We also thought about challenging the conventions when it came to our character selections also. Thrillers are sometimes misinterpreted, and considered too much to be horrors or murder films, so this is why we made one of our characters have a mental health issue, to try steer away from this misinterpretation. We also decided to challenge the typical conventions with the male role as well, by having him appear the vulnerable one, which is not normally the stereotypical way. Our film remains original, whilst still holding these traditional traits and by doing this we hope to continue to attract our audiences, by keeping them engaged in the differences. This is also done by our unique fonts, title sequence and music choice; all of which are not stereotypically normally associated with the genre, yet they still match it in a unique way.

2. How does your media product represent a particular social group?

Our product represents teenagers, however the chosen demographic being 18-25 years old. Again, we challenge the traditional stereotypes of males and females. We have shown the girl to be the character who is unstable and unreliable. This is especially topical at the moment, as it is teenager girls who are often shown in the media binge drinking the majority of the time. We made the male character the opposite of this, the one who remains in mourning for his unstable girlfriend after her death; showing his sensitive side. Some of our audiences may believe these ideas to stereotypically be the other way around. We also carried on this stereotype within the characters costumes, creating opposites. - (the girl shown scruffy and uncared for, whilst the boy is all dressed up)

I have matched the costumes to those of similar characters and genre's.

Robert Pattinson and Emilie de Ravin. - "Remember Me" 2010.

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

Realistically, our film would not be considered by a large Hollywood production company as they are looking for a film that would create a budget; not a low budget British production. If anything, I would expect our film to get support from a British company such as Film Four; or any of its sister partners, such as the Oxford Film Company. This would allow our small budget piece of work to still be distributed, whilst still getting funded by a mainstream company. We would include such companies within our title sequences, in the order of importance that they appear. The main characters are always first, followed by support, production companies, editors and finally the director(s). Production companies who are familiar with our genre would also be recommended.

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

We had found from previous research that the age group most likely to watch our genre of film would be that of 16-25 year olds, so this is who our target audience would be. As mentioned, our genre is a popular one, but not nessecarily a frequently distributed one. This age range may be attracted to this genre, but it is usually there age range that is also starring within the films, and they could also relate sometimes to the story lines that are happening easier that way. Our target audience are much wiser when it comes to technology, so a website and or social networking site for our film would also attract them to watch. This would also make it easier to advertise prior to release.

5. How did you attract and address your audience?

We noted the demand and popularity for the thriller genre, so we thought it best to start basing a storyline around this. We then also thought that our interpretation of this genre should be unique so that the audience would not become bored with the genre entirely. We researched into what music/conventions is the most popular at this time within our chosen demographic so that we could see if there was anything that we could link with our storyline. We also included ideas that were also present in past popular films of the same genre. Again, if our film was to be industrially made, we would attract our audience further by including actors and actresses that are also extremely popular at the moment. This would also link to our advertising on social networking sites, as this is a hobby in the eyes of our audience.

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

I have learnt a lot during the construction of our product, and any problems that we have faced along the way have only helped us improve our work further. We have learnt new techniques with unfamiliar software in order to get the best end result, and we did have to get used to the different settings on the hand held camcorder that we used. Editing was difficult at first considering it was the first time we had used the software, but I did download it so that I could experiment with it independently in my own time. Due to problems with sound we had at the beginning during our preliminary, we decided to leave it out of our final cut, and only use a soundtrack instead. So for this we had to learn how to mute background music and add music. Working as a group made it easier to shoot the actual shots, as we had also planned in advance with the use of a storyboard and shooting schedule; because of this we had enough time to re-shoot the scenes that didn't go according to plan. I have also become more competent using blogs, something which I also hadn't done before. I also became more confident in copying html codes off youtube.com to include images and videos within my blog.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from that to the final product?

I believe we have progressed extremely far from preliminary to final. During the preliminary task, we only filmed what we needed, and now learning from our mistakes we definitely now know that we should overshoot so that we had more material to work with and edit together. We also learnt new camera angles, which helped us when creating an original film opening. By now, we also now how to move and zoom the camera smoothly to help with the continuity of the piece. During the preliminary, because we had compulsory things to include such as match on action and the 180 degree rule; we got to learn new techniques that we hadn't previously known. Editing during the preliminary was hard as we did not know how to cut and crop the scenes, but as we became accustomed to the software when it was time to edit the final, we knew how to make shots black and white and positioning the frames differently to create a split screen effect; although this did take much research into the programme software itself. Overall, on the journey from preliminary to the final cut, I now feel confident enough to be able to create other short movie openings myself in the future.