Blog of the year

Creative evaluation

Evaluation questions

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

In order to construct our sequence, our team researched several popular thriller films such as Se7en and Shutter Island to receive inspiration. Our group incorporated the shaky camera movement from The Se7en in our sequence when the camera is used to capture the hostage characters. This idea helped us to create urgency, a feature in our psychological thriller that we wanted to achieve. We used the theme of reality as our film contributes towards the negative impact of social networking sites. The theme of reality was displayed when the stereotypical male reached over to turn his alarm off to begin an ordinary routine. Reality was also used when the male character was rushing in the panic of work which symbolized normality and everyday routines of normal people. However, we then developed this idea by adding muffled sounds of screaming and rustling in the background, whilst the antagonist flicked through images on his computer. This was copied from the real media product of The Sixth Sense. By doing this, we produced enigmas because the public would begin to acknowledge that this may not be just an average male.

A typical sub genre convention is the deceptive games, played by the antagonist, on the protagonists which demolishes the other’s mental state. Our aim was to fulfill this generic convention through creativity in mise-en-scene. By minimizing the amount of clothes the protagonists wore and by using props such as ties in the mouth and rope covering their hands, our media product illustrated this stereotypical convention positively. We then developed this idea by the creation of our “condom wall” which effectively played with the protagonist’s mental state by suggesting they were the next victims. However, by building suspense and beginning our sequence with normality, we challenged other real media products as we counter typically portrayed everything to be casual, before we gave insights to our psychological genre. This is because, most of the thriller opening sequences that our group have analysed have used stereotypical generic conventions right from the start. However, upon analyzing the opening sequence of Inception, by Christian Nolan, we noticed that everything is very contrapuntal and the surroundings are very calm and , in contrast to the suspicious music. This gave us inspiration and an aim to begin our thriller using the same technique of Inception. When receiving our feedback, our aim worked perfectly as students could not find conventions that symbolized our media product to be of a psychological genre.  As a consequence, this saved the suspense towards our ending when it came apparent that our media product was a psychological thriller, by the use of our disturbing condom wall and our characters acting.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

By establishing our target audience, our group were able to associate our media product with the social group which would prefer to watch our film. From our primary and secondary data, the largest age group appears to be 15-24 that watch thriller films. This age group was significant to us as we were able to link Facebook and social network sites with this social group. For our mise-en-scene, we used props such as Mac laptops, which is stereotypically associated with this age group as elderly people tend not to be familiar with these devices. We also dressed our female protagonists in stereotypical gender clothing such as padded bras and black pleated tights to connect with this specific social group of females aged 15-24 who tend to be associated with this type of clothing.

Our group also portrayed gender in a stereotypical way. In our media product, you can identify the women in the piece as subordinate to the dominant male character. An example of this is when the camera pans on the females helplessly trying to break free as the commanding and dominating male character has left the room. This represents the roles of men and women today in a wider society. The male is always shown to be assertive whereas the women are shown to be inferior. 

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

Our film is not similar to other media products as we have focused on targeting the 8 billion active users of Facebook everyday. Therefore, we have a unique and individual product that could have been produced by major Hollywood studio such as Universal and The 20th Century. It is unique because not many films focus on the negative and dark side of online sites and how it can be a hazard today. Hollywood studios would be interested in producing our film because it not only entertains; it educates the viewers of the potential hazards involved with Facebook. 

Media institutions might distribute our product to famous cinemas as with a rating of 15, our product can be distributed to big chained cinemas. With a theme of social networking, our product can also be distributed by digital distribution on websites such as www.Amazon.com. Amazon might want to distribute our product as there target audience is similar to ours and their website attracts the younger generation.

Our media product offers merchandising such as T-shirts and accessories. By merchandising our product, we are able to spread awareness of the dangers online and hopefully gain more protection for users of Facebook.  The institution of Facebook could use our product for franchising purposes in concern of anti cyber-bullying or anti phising, thus promoting Facebook as well.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Behind the Screen is targeted at both males and females from mid teens to adults. This is because we rated our film 15 so no one younger than the age of 15 would be able to watch it in the cinema. Also, the plot of Behind the Screen is not necessarily suitable for younger teens and children. This is the reason why children are absent from our target audience. 

Before we began filming our opening sequence, we gave out questionnaires to 10 males and 10 females, to establish our target audience. Although it's a small sample, we were able to establish that our target audience consists of more females than males, as males preferred other genres of thrillers than the genre of our opening sequence. From our questionnaire feedback, we also found out that our specific target audience age range is 15 – 65 years. 

A film that is similar to ours is American Psycho. This thriller is similar to ours as it is a psychological thriller with the main character being a male containing a psychological problem. The rating for American Psycho is an 18 which is an older rating than ours, at 15. This could be because the content is more extreme than ours, making it unsuitable for under 18’s to watch. Another film similar to ours is Red Dragon. This film is also has the same genre as ours and it appeals to people age 15 and over, much like ours. We researched BBFC in order to acknowledge the criteria fit for a 15. BBFC classified a 15 as able to contain some graphical images, with inappropriate language and some forms of violence.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

We are aiming our media product at both genders, considering both male and female use Facebook. Our opening sequence would appeal to teenagers and young adults; it may be terrifying for certain people as we have some graphical images within the opening sequence. Some scenes like the pan are not suitable because there are explicit scenes. We have close ups during the pan which are inappropriate and provocative for children to see. We also attracted our target audience when we created our condom wall, included in our mise-en-scene. We made sure the condom wall was saved to the end of our opening sequence to ensure suspense and tension was created. Condoms are an association with the theme of sex which we incorporated in our opening sequence to symbolize young adults and teenagers. This captured and sucked in the audience members, creating enigmas, by portraying a sinister antagonist. We were keen to make our micro elements represent our target audience. For example, the Facebook sound effects used when the door is slamming is associated with the teenage social group because they are constantly activated on social networking sites, even on the go. Our narrative also reflects the target audience as teenagers are associated with social networking sites and communication. There is a shift in representation we used in order to attract the audience. The average young male character getting up for his daily routine actually counter-typically shifts into a rapist, a feature that is not associated with the younger male generation. Our narrative is very modern and current which would appeal to our audience members who have an interest with this crime.

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

At first, it was challenging to learn how to use the camera equipment during the filming as we had problems on setting the position of the camera. This was significant to us as we needed to create high angle shots that represented our male character to always be dominant, compared to the female characters. We captured several different angles from high to medium so we could choose the best footage. A common error which was difficult to achieve was the use of lighting as we filmed on different days which affected the continuity. Therefore, as a group we decided to re-film the antagonist leaving the room to improve. We used new equipment such as the tripod for the pan to avoid any shakiness, as our aim was to make it as smooth as possible. Using the tripod was relatively simple. It played a vital role in our opening sequence as it produced smooth and steady shots.

Our group members were unfamiliar with Final cut. This made it time consuming to learn all the different features and software. We learned how to combine clips with transitions such as "fade to black" to flow our opening sequence. We also learned how to speed the duration of individual clips up in order to maintain under our time limit of 2:15. 

To produce our sound, we used Garage Band. Here, we learnt how to set the key and tone of the music to create enigmas for the audience. The only negative about Garageband was the limited use of tracks we could use that were appropriate for our sequence. We learnt how to use sites such as blogger and prezi which have been really creative to use. Our group enjoyed the creativity attached to prezi and blogger as this was favored by some members in our group. We learnt how to display our work in an artistic way that was entertaining for the public to see.

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

Our preliminary tasks made us feel more confident when filming our full product. From our preliminary video, we were able to establish who is more suited and willing to film or to act. Both team members, Isabele Shen and Olivia developed their ideas and ability to use the camera when practicing the close ups and over the shoulder shots we used in our preliminary.This made our actual filming time for our media product more efficient and effective as both the camera directors were familiar with the technology. Our preliminary video also taught us the basics of Final cut such as the basic transitions and the structure of the clips. This made it easier when building our final opening sequence as our confidence improved the more we used the software.

From our preliminary storyboard, we were able to practice how to construct a storyline that helped us practice our terminology. We were also able to organize the storyline of our preliminary in a way which was logical and that we could refer back to when we were lost. Completing the preliminary storyboard, gave us an insight to creating our main story board for our opening sequence. We knew how valid the story board of our opening sequence was to our team as we were constantly referring back to it for guidance and planning.  

From our preliminary evaluation, we learnt how to identify our strengths and weaknesses, and how to communicate our experience via writing. In a way, this helped us to form our actual evaluation as although the questions are different, we are able to answer promptly.