Evaluation

The Fear-tre

• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
At the start of our film we had a shot of a person stood on their own talking with scary no-diegetic music in the background, we thought that this would set the theme of the film because the scary music mixed with the girl on her own would be seen that she has been picked to be killed. The next part of our film contained bright lighting with school children practicing a school play; this brings the film back to normality with everybody acting normal. The setting of the film (the theatre) also gives the audience a secure assumption of the film’s genre being horror as it is old and deserted. Overall we have stayed to the strict nature of horror films with scary music, people getting killed and psychological games.

• How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our film represents two types of social groups, school children and teachers. The predominant social group in our film is teenagers. The difference in time changes how each social groups are shown. The older teenager’s part in the play is very straight forward whereas the younger teen’s play is more complicated and is directed by a teacher. The location and Mise-en-scene also tells us as an audience that we are in a school. The younger school children are also split into groups; the two girls call and bully the girl on her own because she is new to the school.

• What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
After doing some research into Horror distribution I found out that similarly themed Horror films were very popular with audiences. BoxOfficeMojo.com (a website that deals with how much money movies make) was a useful website to show the popularity of the genre.

Signs: $227,966,634 Buena Vista
The Village: $114,197,520 Buena Vista
The Grudge: $110,359,362 Sony
Alien Vs Predator: $80,282,231 Fox
Freddie Vs Jason: $82,622,655 Fox
Scream: $103,046,663 Dimension Films
Prom Night: $43,869,350 Sony
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer: $40,002,112 Sony

If we were to choose a company to distribute our film it would be Sony because they seem to be the company who are mostly producing school horror films at the minute. We would also choose Sony because they are a very popular distributor who has lots of money to advertise and push our film to the maximum.
• Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience for our film would be aimed at teenagers and student’s ranging from the ages of 15-19 but other ages may also watch. I think this is a suitable audience for our film as it is a school horror and the students will relate to this. The film may get a certificate of 18 as some scenes later on in the film contain strong gore and disturbing images. The bbfc says that for a film to be a 15 it may use horror and gore but “The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable.” I think that we could decide on what gore we want to use to decide what age the film would have to be for.




• How did you attract/address your audience?
To attract our audience we used young adults and a young teacher. Our audience is quite young so we used young actors so that they could relate to them. We also set the piece in a school to relate to teenagers and to offer a small insight into a typical modern day school. The story also provides an escape from reality slightly by making the audience think that the school is haunted.

• What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
From this task I have learnt the basics on premier and editing. Most of the editing on premier was done by Daniel so I didn’t learn all the complicated editing techniques but I have learnt the basics such as cutting parts out and getting the piece’s continuity correct. I also learnt how to use a camera and tripod correctly to get a good film at the end. I have also learnt on premier how to change sound levels to get the best quality film we can get.

• Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
From the preliminary task I have learnt a lot about the continuity of the film and filming to get a good result product. Our preliminary task was ok but could have been a lot better. We saw what was wrong with it such as: sound levels, continuity, filming quality etc. We took all this into consideration when we did our final piece. We filmed the scenes more than once to get the best quality we can, we also filmed the scenes more than once to get the continuity of the film correct. After filming we spent a lot more time on premier to edit the piece until we thought it was perfect and we had to re-film some scenes because they wasn’t correct. Overall I think we have improved a lot since our first task and have created a good piece.