In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
When creating our horror film our aim was to try and make it look as realistic as we possibly could because that is what makes a horror film scary when you believe the action on screen. This proved slightly difficult due to the fact that it is a horror film and too create the feeling of paranormal and make it look as realistic as possible you would need equipment far superior to what we had. But I think considering the scenes were filmed with an everyday cam-corder I think that I turned out very well and the roughness of the filming almost adds to the scary atmosphere in a way just like in the Blair witch project. We were very fortunate to get an ideal location to film in using the attic of a very old building which created the scary atmosphere all on its own and very similar to actual locations that have already been used in several very successful horror films such as Amityville horror and An American haunting. But adding to this was the lighting which came very naturally gloomy up there so it added a scary atmosphere superbly to the film because it created lots of shadows which adds to the sense that something might be waiting for you in the dark. Also the music we created for the film was very simple yet extremely effective because the most important part of a scary film is the sound such as in The ring and The shining both film have a special piece of music or sound that relates to the main villain of the story and when the audience is watching the film and they hear it they instantly know that something is about to happen with the character and that creates all the tension and we took this idea and used it a lot in our film.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
I think that out film represents the normal teenage age group really well by showing a group of normal teenage girls at the the start of the film listening to modern day music and being excited about moving house. It also represents children in the film aswell by showing the children playing happily in the film blissfully unaware of the evil presence among them. This shows the innocence of children but connecting with the evil in a scary film such as the excorscist taking an everyday normal child who is sweet and innocent and possesing her with an evil being.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I think that one of the best companies to distribute our film would be Twisted Pictures they are a small company founded in 2002 so they are a new and modern company distributing mostly films of the horror genre and they are most famous for the SAW series. I also think a company called After Dark Films would be an excellent distributor for our film it specialises in distributing horror films alone and is the organizer for the annual independent horror film festival After Dark Horrorfest. It has distributed films such as An American haunting and Captivity which are films very similar to ours so I believe it would be the perfect company to distribute our film.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
I think that our particular film would be aimed at teenagers to young adults and I think this because the people in the film are teenagers so an audience would better relate to a film with people from the same age group as them. Also because it is a Horror film so most young people wouldn’t enjoy it and also I don’t think an older generation would either. I would give this film around a 15 rating because that is one of the most popular film ratings for a horror film to attract a wider audience. Also the kind of audience that this product would attract would be people who really have a love for Horror films and like to read into the story of them and also i think people that believe in ghosts and paranormal activity and believe things like that exist would really enjoy this film as well.
How did you attract/address your audience?
Well as I think we were trying to attract a teenage audience I think the casual scene we used at the start of the film was very normal and teenage like with modern music and the girls being excited about moving and jumping around slightly and I think this is a realistic scene that the audience watching would hopefully relate and empathise with the characters as normal teenage girls excited about moving.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I have learnt how to use a camera a lot better using various different shots and angles to get the right atmosphere needed for the scene. Also I have improved my editing skills a lot as well cutting down clips to the right size and also creating own music and adding it into the film coordinating with the stuff happening on screen. Creating transitions to help the clips run smoothly but not repeating to many of the same things and also trying to make sure that the effects added an atmosphere to the film but still trying to keep it as realistic as possible. I also learned how to set up a blog and record my evidence as I went along making the film and I found this helped me when I was thinking about my ideas and putting them together.
Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
We improved a lot from our preliminary task to our main product I think because the storyline of our main product was much more thought out and planned than in our preliminary task. Also you can see that we have used a much wider range of shots and angles with the camera to convey our scenes. Also the difference in planning between the preliminary task and main task was substantially more and you can see this when watching the two films. Doing the preliminary task helped us a lot before filming our main task because it showed us that editing is just as important as the actual filming if not more so and we didn’t leave ourselves with very much editing time on our first task so we made sure that we left ourselves plenty of editing time for our main task and it really helped. It also helped us get familiar with the camera as well playing around with different shots and then seeing exactly how it came together once you put it on screen and all of these things meant that when we came around to doing our main task we had a lot better knowledge and this really helped us a lot.
