EVALUATION

Evaluation

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

Our thriller opening follows most of the typical generic convention of a thriller. One of the main conventions used in our thriller is revenge, mysteriousness and suspense. It is almost mixed with comedy which is done purposely to make the audience feel comfortable and ease of the tension, besides; we didn’t want the story to be given away by using other famous convention such as theme of identity, crime or extraordinary events. By doing this, we subverted the codes and conventions and also to break the fourth wall. Our intension is to have the audience at complete suspense as they don’t know what will happen next but willing to find out, but the props such as the knives, syringe and poisoned beer will help reinforce the genre for our film through the opening scene.
Many of the scenes have been influenced but slightly changes by other thrillers and therefore hold many generic conventions in our thriller. The opening for our thriller can be unnatural or strange for a stereotypical thriller because it is very naturalistic. The location used for our film was indoors. We used an indoor location to subvert the genre of stereotypical genre where danger is expected to happen outside at dark, when infact a lot could happen indoors, for example, somebody getting ‘castrated’

The fact that it is shot in the day with daylight could suggests that the film is very normal and not something you would expect for a thriller, however as the audience keep watching, they realize that it is infact a thriller but an unpredicted one. A lot of lighting is used throughout the opening to suggest that danger doesn’t only happen or occur during the night, it could happen anytime and in any form.

The trailer for ‘TEETH’ inspired us to do an opening to something very un-usual, something almost natural but not. We challenged the conventions of a thriller because of the theme, 'mystery' and 'suspense'. We didn’t use any costume apart from normal clothing, this is done so the story isn’t given away and so that the audience are left clueless as hardly any prop is used to impose what could happen until the end of the scene. We subverted the roles of the characters by making the girl the antagonist rather than the boy. We noticed that too often is a boy used as the antagonist while the girl is the protagonist. We wanted to show that female can use cunning ways to revenge and also to show that some female will go to extreme lengths to get back at a person all for the sake of revenge. The audiences are left clueless until half way through the opening because no ideas, props, or costumes were used to differentiate the protagonist or antagonist. Although the protagonist is dressed in both black and white, this suggests that he isn’t entirely innocent or pure or even the hero, he is indeed the victim as the colour suggests, because the ‘black’ colour overshadows the ‘white’ colour this could also suggest that he is a versatile character as the audience can’t easily identify his role in the scene. The girl dressed plainly also adds to the suspense, making it difficult for the audience to identify her role.
We came up with the title ‘Castration’ because this was what the antagonist (Rachel) was going to do. We thought this title would be a hook for our film because its an extreme and uncomfortable title for a film, however this would make the audience want to watch it in order to know who’s being castrated, why and by who?.
The camera work for our opening trailer was very smooth and convenient because we didn’t need to add special effects or do certain camera work to get a certain effect. We challenged the codes and conventions of thriller/comedy by using shots associated with it, such as close ups, extreme close ups, tracking shots, long shots and mid shots.


2. ‘How does your media product represent particular social groups?’(Colleen)

There isn’t huge range of social group represented in out thriller. The opening consists of two characters; one is a protagonist while the other could be considered as an antagonist. The social group that is represented are teenagers around 18-20. The choice of social groups and the gender of characters were developed in order to best suit this target audience.

We want more males as the target audience because the film acts like a warning to males. It warns them to be careful of cheating because when caught out, the revenge can be extreme. Because the title is named CASTRATION, therefore the title and the contents (props) are inappropriate for younger audiences. This is effective as then the viewers, of what ever age and gender, can put themselves in the characters shoes therefore the audience has to be between 16-25 mainly males; gender representation holds a major role in the conventions of this genre as it makes an impact on the way that the audience views the movie. In our movie, gender and age are not represented in a stereotypical way. This is because the antagonist is female which subverts the conventions of the thriller genre as it is expected that the antagonist is a man that is undoubtedly capable of murder, rather than a young girl that is expected to be young and innocent.



3. 'What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? (Chess)

It is important to consider the vast majority of media institutions that now exist and the practicalities and costs involved with each one. Until fairly recently, the methods that could be utilized to distribute films was very limited, and highly expensive. One had to produce a movie with the backing of a major movie studio with a distribution contract that subsequently was worth millions in order to get the film to cinemas and the DVD. With the advent of widespread and high-speed internet access however, and the ability to produce copies of DVD’s from home without the backing of big finance; distribution within the movie industry has change dramatically.

As a group, we would love our film to be distributed by Universal studios which owns the rights to highly successful movies in the film industry, because Universal studios would be able to offer us post production facilities and technological talent which we need in order to make the film a success. Universal studios will help ‘groom’ the film into what suits the film industry, appealing to target and wider audience.

But as mentioned earlier, the internet is another option for us because free video sharing websites such as YouTube would be ideal in publishing our film or even trailers of it- then at least people are aware of it and through word of mouth, our film could have a chance in film industry. By using YouTube, internet advertising and social networks, we feel that we could genuinely make a following for our film.

4. ‘Who would be the audience for your media product?’ (Rhoda)

The target audience we aimed to appeal to was 16-24. We felt this group would be more appropriate to be the target audience. We researched the website ‘pearl and Dean’ which specialized in advertising new releases and deciding the suitable rating and target audiences.

‘Pearl and Dean’ decide on target audiences by comparing a movie that they consider similar to that one. We feel our film will appeal most to 16-25 year olds. However, it is likely that our film will appeal to many other ages outside this target group. This is because during our genre research before we started producing our film, we found that the action/thriller genre is very popular with all ages.

For example, many children under the age of 16 watched ‘teeth’ and found it educational, and many people over the age of 25 watch and enjoy these movies too. So we hope that our film will hopefully appeal to a broad audience of people. We also feel that our main target group would be males; this is because of the storyline.

We researched the target audience for our inspirational film ‘Teeth’, and then compared it to our film. The main age ranges for the viewers were 15-24 and majority of the viewers were males. We also made a survey which we handed out and received the results that the majority of viewers for a movie of this genre will be males aged 15-25.
The minimum viewing age is 15 as it contains offensive weapon (prop). The viewers cannot see the killings otherwise it would be rated 18.



5 ‘How did you attract/address you audience? (Colleen)
We tried to create a storyline that hasn’t been established before or heard of, while at the same time challenging the current conventions for thriller/comedy. In our film, we tried to appeal to our audience in many ways. One of the first things we did was appoint a young lady as the lead role. For the opening sequence, using a lady as a lead role already would suggest to the audience that she is main focus of the scene when infact the young man is. The effect of using young actors was to make the audience feel comfortable and familiarize themselves with the storyline as it is mainly revenge. Revenge could come in any form or shape, but our storyline is to educate young audience to be careful when it comes to relationships as they are some psychopaths that wont give a second chance but rather put the law in their hands, therefore they should think twice about their partners, as they might not be who they claim to be.

Our film was inspired by ‘teeth’ which is an example of a thriller/comedy and appealed to more males because it was educative and different; therefore we decided to go on the same idea but have something different yet similar. Another way in which we tried to attract our audience was by putting what would be considered as the end of the film to be the opening sequence. This was done purposely to subvert the conventions of thriller/comedy because normally it should be viewed chronologically, so that the audience can ask the questions but answer it with what they see on the screen, however we wanted to involve the audience into the storyline immediately but at the same time give them enough time to start asking questions about the characters but not enough time to answer the question and hopefully this would act as a hook to catch the audience’s attention where they feel the need to know the rest of the story in order to find out what happens.
*We also attracted our audience by holding interviews about their thought of the film ‘Castration’, and below is one of our interview with our target audience


The filming equipment we used had advantages and disadvantages. The tripod was very effective and made massive difference to the professionalism of our film. For example, at the beginning of the opening sequence, we needed an establishing/tracking shot, and that couldn’t have been done without the tripod because it was easier to turn the camera smoothly. We find the tripod to be more practical than hand held camera that is needed to be kept still constantly. However it was quite hard to have the camera tracking with it being on the tripod when it came to the indoors scene, so we had to do a crane shot instead of the shot we wanted originally.
We faced some difficulties such as the camera going off during the recording, this slowed the pace if the production as we had to go back the next day to re-record, which also meant that we had to assure the availability of the actors in order to make sure the recording is completed. Apart from the camera failing us during the recording, everything else went smooth throughout the development of the production

6. ‘Have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?’ (Chess)

During the production, we have learnt a lot about technology used in order to produce a piece of film. We have learnt and developed IT skills through blogging, and how to transfer different types of media from the camera to the Apple Mac computers. 

The software we used was: Garage Band, Final Cut Pro, and Live Type. Through Garage Band, we were able to make the background music that would mix in with the actions on screen, we wanted a suspenseful music, which was difficult to get on copyright sites, eventually we were able to create the right music we thought was appropriate for the opening sequence; we then exported this file into an MP3, and added it to the sequence on ‘Final Cut pro’. The editing software ‘Final Cut Pro’ was extremely useful software to use as there were huge range of different ways to edit our movie and many different effects to use, so it gave big chance of opportunity to make our movie professional. 

The filming equipment we used had advantages and disadvantages. The tripod was very effective and made massive difference to the professionalism of our film. For example, at the beginning of the opening sequence, we needed an establishing/tracking shot, and that couldn’t have been done without the tripod because it was easier to turn the camera smoothly. We find the tripod to be more practical than hand held camera that is needed to be kept still constantly. However it was quite hard to have the camera tracking with it being on the tripod when it came to the indoors scene, so we had to do a crane shot instead of the shot we wanted originally. 

We faced some difficulties such as the camera going off during the recording, this slowed the pace if the production as we had to go back the next day to re-record, which also meant that we had to assure the availability of the actors in order to make sure the recording is completed. Apart from the camera failing us during the recording, everything else went smooth throughout the development of the production. 

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

As a group, we can happily say that we have progressed since our preliminary task as we have learnt more skills when editing a film through ‘Final Cut Pro’, ‘Live Type’ and certainly ‘Garage Band’. Using these softwares has showed us that making a film takes a lot of effort and consumes time when it comes to editing. We also learnt much more about equipments and how to play around with the software in order to get the effect we want in the opening sequence.

During the production of the main task, a huge amount of time was consumed on preparing for the genre such as research and creating a storyboard along with a working script. The storyboard we created helped us to visualise what we wanted the film to be like such as the plots and shots needed for the opening sequence.

It was important that we did the research in order to be fully aware of what is expected in thriller/comedy genre in order to include all the conventions. We also researched movies that had similar genre to ours in order to know that we are on the right track. This helped us develop a detailed plot and a bigger image of what conventions are included in a thriller/comedy genre.


During the production, research into the target audience was done, which is very important to the product as a whole because it is needed for the audience to to fit into the age group that is appropriate for thriller/comedy genre.

In conclusion, we believe that our final product has turned out to be successful even though it could have been better such as having more dialogue, more storyline to the plot and more reaction shots in order to give the audience clue about the story line but overall we are happy with our production as we like to believe that it is unique and different from other thriller//comedy genre.