Evaluation Activity 1

The way our media piece challenges and competes with existing products is that it uses aspects familiar with films on the market such as The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity.

A simple, bold font is used for the titles, making them clear to read and producing drama. The colour red which is used for the main title has connotations associated with blood, gore, death and danger, which reflects our chosen genre.

All of the frames we used to create our opening scene storyboard in the picture above are taking place in the 5 different locations that we had planned to film our opening scene in:

- Two frames are located in the boiler room
- Two frames are located at the nature reserve
- One frame is located underneath the school stage
- One frame is located in my utility room
- The final frame is located in Hayden Simmon's bedroom (Group Member)

All these locations are purposefully dark and eerie in order to create tension and atmosphere that relates to the genre of our opening scene; 'horror.'

In our opening scene we used various props, these consisted of:

- Fake Blood
- Kitchen Knife
- Oil/Petrol Can
- Water
- Rope
- Duck tape
- Bin liners
- Chair
These props were used to empathise horrific situations that the main character is in during our opening scene to an audience. These props also helped us to produce tension and atmosphere that related to the genre of our opening scene, making our media product more successful.

In our opening scene you see numerous different costumes, in different parts of our opening scene, in different locations. Our opening scene was meant to convey the idea of a dream/premonition taken place, not being set in present time. this meant we used different costumes in order to portray this element to an audience further. Some of the costumes we used were visually effective, produced by the use of fake blood and media makeup. This improved the professionalism of our opening scene as our costumes were believable creating tension and atmosphere and making our opening scene more successful.

The camera work looks professional as the use of a tripod enabled us to capture steady shots. We used a range of different camera angles and techniques such as:
- A close up shot, which tightly frames a person or an object. This will help to distinguish our main character as well as to show detail; such as characters emotion. This shot should help to create atmosphere and tension for our opening scene causing it to be more dramatic and successful,
- A point of view shot, which shows what a character (the subject) is looking at. This will cause the audience to interact with our main character, as a point of view shot will force them to sympathise with his situation making them more emotionally involved.
Which helped us to create a more effective, successful opening scene.

The title of the film is in Red writing on a black background so that it stands out from the rest of the titles which consist of a black background with white writing.

All of the frames have a different image from the opening scene in 5 different locations that we set our piece in; 2 frames show in the boiler room, another two show in the nature reserve, one other shows under the stage, a different one shows a hand at a back door and the final one shows the scene in the bedroom. All these settings are dingy and dark to set the atmosphere for the movie.

in our movie we used numerous props consisting of, masking tape, fake blood, bin liners and make up. These are all used to assist us in creating the atmosphere and tension that we wanted our opening scene to portray. For costume we decided to use numerous different costumes for different settings as it is meant to be a dream and set at different times on different days and someone wouldn't be wearing the same clothes each and every day.

One of our group members Hayden Simmons decided to be the actor in the film as we had to substitute the actress we had lined up at short notice. Which left myself and another member of the group, Michayla Oglesby, to do the camera work. We set the camera up at each location with a tripod so that the camera would stay steady for us to be able to film each shot. All of the editing of the film was mainly down to my two myself and Hayden Simmons as we had problems with uploading our film because of the high quality of the camera content, it had to be converted. We then had problems with the programme we were using and had to transfer all of the film clips onto another log-on to be able to edit them. After we had done this my group members done the editing in their free periods and when I was off poorly. They used the programme premier elements to upload the film onto and then edit the film adding in the titles and effects that made our opening more effective for it's audience.

The story of our film is about a man who has a split personality disorder and we try to represent him as the victim right through the film so that the audience sympathise with him until the very end when they find out he's actually the killer. The opening scene sets this up because it See's a serious of events in his dream where he looks like he's a victim and he's been kidnap ed, kept hostage and tortured.

Our genre for the film is a horror and the opening suggests this by the disturbing and horrible things that are happening to the man in his dreams.

There is only one character in our piece and he is introduced in many different situations all at once as he has flashes and repetitive part of dreams all the time of himself. His dreams see him as a victim which is what we want the opening and main part of the film to portray.

We used a rewind feature so that at the end when the dream is coming to an end all of the main parts of his dream rewind and seem to undo themselves before he wakes up. we also used a fast-play feature which made a slow clip play in a fast version so it looked slightly distorted and not in sync to what it would normally and also looks effective for the image that we want to come across to our audience.

Evaluation Activity 2

Our media product does not particularly represent a social group as it is a horror designed to be different and not fit any stereotypes as the story is designed to shock and be scary, but yet form a supernatural reality.



The image above incorporates a picture of a character called Marie from Haute Tension (Left) and our own main actor Hayden Simmons (Right)

The similarities in terms of appearance are that in the opening scenes compared to the opening scene of Haute Tension are that both characters have clothes on that are ripped and bloody, also they both have a split persona which is a main key in both films.

The differences in terms of appearance are that Hayden is a male and the Haute Tension chrachter is female, obviously this is going to create different circumstances because of gender issues but mostly the roles are the same as they are both psychopathic killers that are shown in different perspectives throughout the film plots.

Evaluation Activity 3

A production company is responsible for the development and physical production of a new media product. Therefore considering that me and my group members; Zak and Michayla were responsible for the development and physical production of a new media product, (being an opening scene)we could say that we have acted like production company throughout this whole process of producing an opening scene.

A production company may also be directly responsible for the raising of funding for the production of this media product. Our budget was extremely low and we spent less than £10 buying any needed props for our footage that we filmed. However if we were to create a professional media product that was defined as 'category A;' meaning the film was made with entirely British resources, most of the funding for our media product would be supplied by the British film council.

Institutionally our film would compete with existing films such as:
- Paranormal Activity,
- And Blare Witch Project.

This is because both of these media products are low budget films, produced on hand held digital cameras, similar to ours.

We used these films to research what people are named in the titles. We found that the titles of a film normally include these people:
- The production company/producers,
- Cast and crew,
- Film distributors,
- Director,
- Film name,
- And sound producers.

Titles are normally used as a recognition for all of the various people that worked together to finish and release a media product. This knowledge informed our group that we should mention everyone that helped to make our media product happen as a recognition in our titles. This again makes our media product more successful and comparable to existing media products.

Another role that a production company takes into account is finding a suitable institution to distribute our media product.

A film distributor is an independent company who are responsible for the marketing and circulation of movies in theaters, and for home viewing (DVD, Video-On-Demand, Download, Television etc). There are many respected, recognisable film distributors, some of these being; 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers and Universal Studios. These film distributors are amongst some of the best in the film industry which we should definitely consider a partnership with to distribute our media product. However these films distributors favour films with genres other than the genre that we chose for our opening scene. After doing some research i found a well recognised film distributor who favour films with the genre horror, this film distributor is called; 'Lions Gate.' It would be a sensible decision to use Lions Gate to distribute our film as this institute is typically known to distribute existing media products with the same genre as ours, knowing the best ways to market and circulate our media product, making as much profit as possible from our film.

Evaluation Activity 4

(Click to Enlarge)

This is the typical target audience example that we are trying to create our first scene for as they enjoy scary movies very much. Typically after analysis and questioning of the subject we concluded that they would dress in dark clothes reflecting their scary movie and supernatural interest as this is the colours they enjoy wearing because it may relate to there personality. The music that they are interested would be up beat, 'heavy' music that you would find in a scary movie to build the tension in the atmosphere.

However previous target audience research informed my group that:

The horror movie age/gender profiles which I found whilst researching into a potential target audience, both support the outcome of my results in questions 1 and 2 from my audience questionnaire.

From looking at the results I collected from question 1 from my audience questionnaire. You can clearly see that more males answered my questionnaire than females.



This supports the 'horror movie gender profile.' This informs me that our media product which we are going to produce should be aimed more at males than females, due to my own research on horror films supporting existing research.

However a quote from Jim Braden, a representative for Dimension Films, stated that:
"For a horror film to be successful today, it has to appeal to everyone."
This advises me that we shouldn't neglect the idea of a female audience from our media product that we are going to produce just because in theory it would attract more of a male audience.

From looking at the results I collected from question 2 from my audience questionnaire. you can see by observation immediately that most of the people who answered my questionnaire fit into the age category: 15-29.



Again this supports the 'horror movie gender profile.' This informs me that our media product which we are going to produce should be aimed at the social group labelled, and suggests it might be 'Emo,' as well as an audience ranging from the age of 15 - 30 due to my own research on horror films supporting existing research.

Evaluation Activity 5

We addressed our audience by asking close friends and family to watch our media product, we did this because mostly they fit in with the audience we have chosen to target.

Some aspects we used to attract people were to send links on our blog and Facebook to promote this to audiences that fit our target audience.

Our film relates to other similar films such as the Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, this is because the are filmed with non professional cameras and in an armature way where it was purposely filmed badly. This has a very good effect as it looks like it actually is reality.

In our film I think we succeeded in the task of using the correct genre conventions, use of music. This is because we believe we used the right techniques and music tracks that suited our genre which was Horror.

Our film in theory would have one very good characteristic that will allow it to be widely sold as many people would enjoy it, this is because the plot would be so detailed and entertaining, this would be our unique selling point as we can relate that we cannot compete with major companies that have a much wider range of software and technology to enhance the video capabilities but with our plot we feel we do not need all of the special effects because our storyline solely is what we feel a match for the existing products, especially things such as Paranormal Activity and the Blair Witch Project.

Evaluation Activity 6

In the process of creating our media coursework I feel i have learnt many things, I have thurther developed my use of editing skills techniques that include time stretch and shrinking, use of effects and transitions and to use and understand editing new software (Premiere Elements 8.0).

Also my filming techniques have improved dramatically as i have learnt how to successfully use a tripod and create different shots that make the mese en scene to look lots more appealing.

Below are some of the hardware equipment we used:







Resources we have used are:

- Two Different Video Recorders
- Camera
- Internet
- Mobile Phones

I have learnt that the making of films rely deeply on good filming and swift, efficient, technical use of editing software. Throughout the whole project we have used many different types of software as we have needed to d various things.

The programmes that we have used during the production of our opening scene include:

- Microsoft XP Operating System
- Adobe Premiere Elements 8.0
- Adobe Fireworks CS4
- Microsoft Office Word
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 7
- .MOV to .AVI Converter
- VLC Media Player
- Microsoft Office Powerpoint

Also some websites to recognise are:

- Art of the Title
- Slide Share
- Survey Monkey
- Vimeo

Evaluation Activity 7

Looking back at my preliminary task, I feel I have learnt a great deal since I first used a camera and we start to practice filming from different angles and the different kind of shots that we could use. As a group we have worked together to bring ideas to attention that could work well. Since our preliminary task I have learnt masses about filming because I was in our preliminary task and didn't get much time to film. I have learnt about all of the different camera angles and shots that can be used in a film to make the action look more effective and fit in better with the theme. Shots such as the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot/reverse shot are all things that i have learnt to use when editing it into the final product and to use the camera t film so that it can be edited in the first place. I have also learnt that using a tripod instead of holding the camera (like for the preliminary task) makes the camera much more steady and look much more professional.

Also my editing software knowledge in Premier Elements has improved a great deal. I have learnt most aspects of the things that it can do to a video and the different effects that can be edited.

- Use frames from both tasks show what I know about shot types, edit terms and techniques