Evaluation Questions

Annabell Pohl

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











Our media course work is about a 2-minute opening of a Horror movie. Our product took many ideas from different genres of films to create. Ideas from the unborn and The Ring were central in forming the baseline of our script and our storyline.
I drew out a storyline that fit into the pictures above and tried to represent all the horror materials I could find that would fit in and which can work perfectly with our film opening. The Fear Factor that I put into the movie contributes to the forms of the conventions of real media and media, which is not that normal like other media products. The ingredients of a horror film are, that you have to take care, that the hole story, is scary, that ou could see blood and that the people are screaming sometimes, also that the people are in panic situations and also that they maybe have a very dark for live story, these things making a horror film to something what is horror. In our 2 minutes opening film, we created a story, about a boy and a girl which habe been in love one yeart ago, but then he left her. But she doesn’t wanted to respect his decision so she made a plan and killed him in the bottom floor of a big house. Also a very good thing is, that she talks, and at the end she can’t understand, that she killed him. You can see flashbacks and her panic in the situations. I challenge this quiet good, because I produce the story with my group made and she has much more expierence then me, so it was much nicer, because she could tell me, how to do special thinks and she helped me with the editing, she explained it to me. Also I really liked it to made the costume design in our opening film and the designing of the outlines with our names.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My media product represents the social group, which wants to see horror movies and wants to get the thrill of watching something that frightens them, I think it is for the group of genre with the ge 16-25. I used it with a special though, because I though that nobody from the older people would look at our little media studies opening film which is 2 minutes. So I decided that we just made the genre group for younger people also more teenagers. Also thefilm is with very young actors, it wouldn’t work, if a older person says, wow I really understand the hole film. It is more a teenyhorror story. But I think it wouldn’t be bad, if a oder audience would watch our film, because we tried to made something special, and what not so many people use. So we would be blessed, if someone of the oder people and of couse also all the younger people would say to use, that your film is very good. The using of the mise-en-scenes was not all the time so good, because the annoying think here is, that you don’t have such a good filmset and you don’t have the opportunity to use everything what you want.. But we managed it, and we used some good things for our film. The editing was not so easy for me, because of these, Lisa my group made has done the most of the editing because I never worked with the program before, so I looked at her, how he was doing it, and so I learned a little bit when I was looking at her doing it. And the editing in our film is very good, I think, Lisa done a good jop. The cinematography in our film is very good, we used some good pan shots, tilt shoty, and also very good zoom shots. Also the using of the flashbacks was a very good idea, the cinematography use in our film is not that bad, I really like it. All these things which we have done in our film, and how we worked represent my character absolutely well.

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







By realizing the genre of our movie is Horror, I tried to think of media institutions that associate with this kind of movie we also used. Then I looked up on the internet lots of very famous horror movies and continued my research as to which companies distributed those kinds of movies. On the top, I have some good examples.




Who would be the audience for your media product?

I thinkour audience would be people who really enjoy it to watch horror movies and movies, which made you be so scary, that you think you can not look it anymore but exactly this mix of a little bit to much and exactly right made the perfect horror movie, so we tried to make this. And we made this for a audience with the ages maybe 16-25 not so young and not for people who are not that young and understandable like the younger generation. Also we think that not that much oder people would watch the movie, or wouldn’t be so perfect for the oder audience, because we used very young people, teenagers who are acting in the movie so, I would say, that the audience would stay more by the younger and fantasiefully people, who can think them into the movie and could understand the story. And also, the bloodscenes, aren’t so good, if you show them little people, so the age just for people with the start of the age 16.

How did you attract/address your audience?

I tried to attract the audience by using the simple method of suspense through our opening two minutes. We used Kim and Henry for our movie, and we though that they would be the perfect characters for our movie, because they aren’t like all the other peolfe and they could fix in the parts of each role best. And you counld not see openings like this and we though that this would be the best, if the people could see from the start of the beginning, that the girl would be the person, who kills the boy at the end, because they have such a big fight. This was good of attracting our audience as the titles tell a bit of the story already and gives ideas that this could be a horror movie. We have used genre and we used the elements of our genreto attract an audience in a special way, we tried it, that the genre would be perfect for genres with the age 16-25. Like I list of a question before. And I think our genre attract to our audienceabosolutely well, because you can’t se everywhere a film like ours. The address information’s hich I can give are, that we made all the stuff on our owns and we created the story, and the 2 producers, me and Lisa are famal, so the address of our movie is from two femal people. I think our our film is formal, sometimes maybe a little bit with to much bad words, but that has to be there, it wouldn’t be so interessing and it wouldn’t fit to the horror genre of our fim ,I we haven’t used it. But you can see from the clothes which our acotrs are wearing, that the class is formal. And we used a little bit of the teenage language.

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

Over the last few months working on The opening flm, ESCAPE I have personally learnt how to use our editing software, Premier Elements, on our school computers and use Audacity, which is a music-editing software to compile tracks and edit them down to the right size. As I was the member to make all the titles for our movie I did practice a lot on Adobe Photoshop to re-construct the titles of the credits that are in our movie. Finding new websites on downloading music that wasn’t copyright was a big achievement on our behalf and use that in our movie to create effects and soundtracks. Also I learned things, how to name shots, like pan shots, close up shots, or different thins like high angle shots, I never heard these thing before, since I started to work in our media class, it has helped me very much, to have a teacher like Mrs. Downes, who is always there, if you have questions, or things, you don’t understand. The technologies we used have been good digital hardweare, but not the best, so we didn’t had the opportunity to make a film, where you could see everything absolutely good and we couldn’t manage it, to make a film, who you can’t see any shake, because we always haf to hold the camara. The software on the computer was not to bad, we could manage it very well, to use it there. But the editing program, was sometimes absolutely not that good, because you have to reseave everything all 15 minutes. After a while it is absolutely annoying, also the computers aren’t that fast, so you have to wait very long till they are uploaded. The uploading was not to bad, but I could be better. The downloading form the internet was very easy there we hadn’t got any problems also we didn’t loaded much stuff from the internet, just 2 songs. The embedding was also not a big problem for us. The internet searching was also a nt big problem, because we always use the internat also in our freetime, so you have experinces with it. The program youtube helped us very much, because you could see examples of films, also there was another program, which I can’t remember, which helped us very much, for seeing how to make a film opening also the block of course, because we could looked at eachothers work and the work from the upper six media studies people.

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

Looking back at the time we as a group did the preliminary task I can confidently say that I have improved a lot. Also you could see such a big differents, between the opening film now, and your prilmiminarytast before. Now we used much more stuff, like better shots, better locations, better actors and much more things, like not real blood and a real story, which looks much way more like a real film then like a tiny bit of learning how to do it. Also the working with the program, like editing, or searching for songs, and good actors are much better in this part. So I can say, that I have improved so much and I also understand much more, what to do, and what the teachers and the people in my class thing about.

How did the feedback you recieved help you to make a better film opening?

It helped me very much, because when you have second opinions about your work, you can do the work, who isn't so good, better.
We had very good feedback from Mrs. Downes and Mrs. Black, they said about our film, that the running foot shot is a little bit to dodgy and the sound editing is clumsy the meaning at start is unclear and the music choice at killing is very 1980’s.
Also Mrs. Downes said, that the caption colour red on black is very difficult to read. And she said, that "Escape" is very like the caption and it shouldn't start at more.
However we had very good and helpful advices and feedback from Gabby Paterson, she said, that Kim Paxton,she's playing the main caracter in our film Escape, looks like she is moving to fast in the running scene on the big field.
Also that when the title comes up all the disappears come up, maybe it should be fade. A little mistake we did as well was, that we forgot to let the phone ring,Gabby reminded us about it and we changed it.
Also everyone told us, that the music is a little bit to fast and not absolutly perfect for the film, so we changed the music in a very good and absolutely perfect song for our film.
The film we maket, was also at the beginning a little bit to short, so we did some other things in some parts, were we thought, we could make it a little bit longer and more interessting for people who want to see our film.
After we got these feedback we changed all the things and we got new feedback for our film.
Gabby Paterson said this time just positive things, that she really enjoyed the beginning of your film and that we have created a quality film which looks convincing. She said, that she especially liked the music which we used throughout the film. Also she said, that it helps to build intensity in the scenes and compliments the genre of our film. She is a fan from our scenes which were flashbacks in black and white as it enabled her to distinguish between the past and present.
We good however feedback form a person, who forgot to put their name under his post, but however he things the film is well made with very good music but however there are a few things he didn't liked e. g. the running in the field which looks weird for him and he said to us, that we should add a sound effect to show the mobile phone ringing. Which we did streight afterwards.We also get some feedback, which isn't written in our block or documented.
Some people also told us, to make some changes. On some parts, when they were walking behind us and could see a little bit of our film.
sometimes, we also asked people, if we could cange something.
That helped absolutly much for making a better film with Lisa and so we could improve a lot and make the film to a better and cooler one, with better musinc, with slower running and with the phone ringing and lots of other little thing, we had to change.
And so, we have produced and maked a quiet good and quality film.
By our preliminary task we also get some helpfull feedback, but we could't change that much, we just did the preliminary task, to improve for the big film project which called Escape.
Jenny wrote: Just after vidur has sat down, the lighting in the room changes which is a continuity error because it does not look like the footage was filmed on the same day.
Henry wrote: The preliminary task is good, the only thing that wasn't good was that the camera was wobbling sometimes and it was a bit dark when Vidur looked through window. But apart from those little mistakes the task has been well done.
James said: It was good and especially the part at the beginning with the music. When you filmed the parts with the close ups of the characters the camera started to shake and in parts the lighting was different but apart from that it was good with a wide range of camera angles.
This prelimanary task was really good do practice and to get feedback. That really helped us and we couldn't make the same mistakes again in the real and important film named Escape, that was really helpfull!
And you can see such a big difference between the preliminary task and the real film.
Its really cool, to see this success!