Evaluation - Personal Write Up: Chandler

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

From the outset, I believed that we should attempt to make a psychological thriller film, with heavy inspiration from the film “The Gift”, where the protagonist of the film aims to get revenge on his former classmates. Conventionally in films such as the one we aimed to make, a male takes the lead role. This is something that we ended up conforming to, and opted to stick to the usual binary structure of a male overpowering a female. This binary structure is challenged however, when it is revealed that the character Sasha (who is played by Adaora), used to bully Bobby (played by Daniel). Despite this challenge, the usual binary structure is restored as Bobby ends up getting his revenge on Sasha and taking her life, and thus asserts his male dominance. Utilising the various camera shots and angular techniques that we learnt, vital story driven moments during the film such as the reveal of the knife were zoomed in and focused on, another convention of real media products. The utilisation of music in our film was also very essential. Music in media and films plays an important part in setting the mood, and our use of non-diagetic music exemplifies this, as it is eerie and dark and the heavy drums at the end of the film signifies the tension of the rest of the film that is yet to come.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

As aforementioned, the most obvious display of social groups in our product is that the protagonist (Sasha), is female, and is the character who ends up getting killed by the male (Bobby). The fact that this murder occurs two minutes into the proposed film, and how Bobby seemingly gets away with this displays the conventional stereotype of males being smarter and dominant than females. Prior to her killing in the film, there is a low angled POV shot, showing how to Bobby, Sasha looks miniscule and this is a further display of the power dynamic between the two characters. Furthermore, racial media conventions and stereotypes are shown in the film. Regularly in horror films, it is the black/racial minority character that ends up dying first, and this occurs in our film as Sasha is the first character to die.

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

Our film does not display any cultural barriers within it, for example region specific slang, and so would be really easy to distribute in other countries. However, due to the low budget production of our film, an international release is not likely. Because of this, the ideal media institution to release our film would be on YouTube, where many amateur films are content is posted. Because of YouTube’s international viewership, it could mean that many people across the world see our film. On top of this, YouTube is a free application where it is possible to both upload and view films meaning many people could access without a fee – and free stuff appeals to people. After this is uploaded, it could be then possible to get even more feedback from the wider audience who viewed our film as a result of the upload on YouTube, and improve our film. An alternate institution that could potentially distribute our media product could be an independent film company. Film4, a subsidiary of Channel 4 are a well-recognised and prominent independent film company with their own channel on British television, and are the masterminds behind such hits like Slumdog Millionaire and East is East which were released to critical acclaim. Publishing our product on Film4 could mean that our film gets national attention, and coupled with the fact that Film4 also broadcasts Hollywood and Bollywood films, could also mean international attention too.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

During the planning phase of making our film, we conducted various surveys and made research on the ideal target audience of thriller films. We wanted our product to appeal to both male and female audiences, and our research and surveys concluded that a target audience of those in the age bracket of 15-24 would be suitable. People in this age bracket seemed to be most interested in psychological thrillers. There was not much difference in the male and females who watched thriller films, and so no gender specific changes would be made. Because of the age 15 being our lowest age, we decided to make the content in the film suitable for the ages of 15 and up, and so made the film rating 15.

How did you attract/address your audience?

The primary way we attracted our audience within the film was the use of young actors. This would mean that in a way, it was possible for the target audience to relate to the characters they saw before them straight away in age. One of the main themes that is touched heavily upon is bullying, and many people in the target age group suffer from this. The plot of our film is very easy to follow, and is not complicated and oversaturated with loads of characters. Also, YouTube is a popular social networking application which many people in our target audience use, and so this allowed us to reach out to our target audience in that way.

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

There are many things I have learnt personally from creating this media product. Firstly, the use of video editing software, namely Adobe Premiere Pro, which allowed us to edit the film and cut the various scenes to give the sense of continuity and provide the music for the film. Blogger is another software I learnt to use, this time browser based. Blogger allowed us to document our construction, planning and this very evaluation effectively. Blogger allowed us to keep a concise track of the work that we had done at any various point in the making of our film. We also utilised YouTube not only to eventually upload the film, but also to watch various industry standard trailers and opening of films for inspiration. We also used a Celtex, an industry used software to create our script and the calendar aspects for the film for an effective schedule. Survey Monkey also helped significantly, as it allowed us to gain feedback prior and after our film made on proposed ideas and after the actual film had been made. It was also very easy to utilise each software, especially the Google-owned ones (Blogger, YouTube, Google search engine).

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

From the initial preliminary task, I feel that in terms of media knowledge I have come a long way and have progressed well. This includes operating a camera, working in a team, using new software and an improvement on my writing skills and a better understanding of what it takes to be in the media industry. I have also learnt through this task that target audience research and audience feedback is very vital to the making of any media product as it was target audience feedback that allowed us to change the film and make it better.