Evaluation: Jessica Cooper

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (e.g. comparison nine frame analyses of your film and an influential film)

My influential film was insidious, I liked the style of the titles and it influenced various scenes that I used in my film.

In the first frame we can see 'IN ASSOCIATION WITH STAGE SIX FILMS' they are a company that produces and distributes low budget films. This shows the production company straight away in the first few seconds of the sequence, in our 2 minute opening it opens with our production company logo called 'SIX 8'. The difference between our production company and the production company for insidious is that we have a logo and the production companies theme sound effect, whereas insidious' the production company logo is written in the same font as all of the titles in the film and opens with the soundtrack and it doesn't have a logo. This maybe shows that the production company is a low budget production company that isn't very popular as they do not have a recognizable logo/sound effect like most well known production companies. Therefore I think our logo is more effective. Using the same font for the production companies and titles is effective as it adds continuity and synergy to the film. 

In the second frame of insidious the screen shows the distribution companies. They are 'ALLIANCE FILMS' and 'IM GLOBAL'. Alliance films are a distribution/production company and Im global are a digital distribution company. In the second frame of our film I have shown the company logo and used an associated sound effect. My distribution company is called 'TOXIC PICTURES'. In both my film and insidious the distribution companies are shown after the production company names, but the insidious editors haven't used the distribution companies logos whereas I have which makes the production and distribution companies for my film look more professional and stand out. However, in Insidious the titles have been effectively edited, with smoke coming off the writing and gradually blowing away. This special effect represents the horror genre and engages the audience. The music for the opening in Insidious is played throughout over the production and distribution companies. In contrast I used sound effects for the opening frames of our film that can be heard whilst the production and distribution companies are shown on screen. The music for my film begins after the production and distribution companies are shown. The music in the opening of insidious is very typical for the horror genre as it is very orchestral music, conventionally string based instruments are used to create an unsettling atmosphere. In this violins are played in a very edgy choppy way, at one point the violins are played to create an evil sense of laughter, which would make the viewer feel uncomfortable. The theme music used in Insidious isn't used in the opening as they want to create a motif later on in the film. This music (Tiptoe Through The Tulips) is contrapuntal  - we wouldn't normally expect to hear this type of song in a horror film. Because it has been used in this film viewers will have a new relationship with the song and feel fearful when they hear it, this song is used alongside conventional horror images to create a scary atmosphere. Likewise in my film I have used very conventional music for the horror genre.  

In the third frame of Insidious the directors name 'A JAMES WAN FILM'  appears in a lamp shade. In the fourth frame the camera then inverts around 360 degrees and pans down showing the lampshade of a little boy sleeping in his room. This is the first scene where the protagonist is introduced, using children is a typical horror convention as children represent vulnerability and weakness, this means that viewers with feel sorry for the victim because they are very young and still have a long life to lead. Using a sleeping child is effective as people are generally more vulnerable whilst asleep because you cannot expect anything. This also gives the audience a sense of location in the film. In the third screenshot for our film it shows 'pathway productions' in the right hand corner at the top which is another one of our production companies. The camera then pans around the room showing the house before the crime happened. This also shows the audience a sense of location like in insidious. In the fourth screenshot of our film a flashback effect is used which creates the split between past and present, it then shows the crime scene, in the top left hand corner it says 'IN ASSOCIATION WITH STAGE SIX FILMS' which is similar to the production company frame in Insidious in the first shot just at a different time in the sequence. In this shot the audience are first introduced to the crime scene, in which there are plastic sheets over everything, this creates an enigma as to what the sheets are being used for, and ultimately creates a scary eary atmosphere. Our film contrasts to insidious as it instantly shows the crime scene and what happened so it doesn't build up much tension, where as in insidious the camera just pans around a spooky house giving an eary atmosphere which builds a lot of tension for the audience. Also in insidious it shows the whole house where as in our film it only shows one room, if we had a bigger location for our film like in insidious it could have kept the audience more engaged and would have created a better plot as it would added to the enigma of the protagonist and the location of the incident. 

In the fifth frame of our film, the camera pans around the room like it did in frame 3 and then in the right hand corner at the bottom it shows the directors name 'A ROBERT SHAW FILM' which is similar to when it shows the directors name in the third screen shot for insidious, I think that the directors name for insidious was creatively edited incorporating the room where the frame was leading to. Where as for our film I used the same font used throughout with no special effects, being the editor next time I could improve on this by trying to incorporate the directors name into the scene in a more creative way. 

The fifth sixth and seventh frames for insidious show the different rooms and come up with titles with a red and smoke effect, these are very effective as they show the typical conventions of the horror genre- using the colour red represents danger and blood which is necessary in a horror film and smoke effects represent fire and danger. In the sixth and seventh frames the protagonist is finally introduces into the sequence for the first time, this adds to the enigma as to what happened. They show the protagonist dead on the floor covered in blood, cuts and bruises with a bloody knife placed next to her, these are effective as they are typical horror conventions like used in insidious.

The seventh frame shows a canted angle of the protagonist, this was used to create an uneasy distorted atmosphere to show that something isn't right. In the  shots that show the titles for insidious there are no creative camera angles used, all though the titles for Insidious are more effective than our ones. I think our film challenges insidious as we have used more creative camera angles. Insidious used different interior locations of the house in different rooms where as we use the same interior location in one room, which is something that we could have improved on as we could have used a broader location.

In the eighth frame for both my film and insidious show a close up of a face, in our film it shows the protagonists face with bruises and cuts on it, contouring is used to show she is dead and her body it degrading away, the wounds on the victim give the viewer an insight as to how she has been killed and to show that it was a brutal killing. In Insidious the frame shows the antagonists face where it is first introduces to the viewer, the antagonist looks very old fashioned with a pale white face and a candle lighting the face from the darkness, this shows that the antagonist may be a ghost which makes the film quite paranormal, this is a typical horror convention but also one of the worst ones as you are blind to ghosts which makes you feel fearful of the film.

In the ninth frame of both films the title of the film is shown, for Insidious red writing and a Gothic font is used which is the same font that is used throughout the film, this is good as it shows continuity of the titles. The title is very effective for the genre as the Gothic font and colour red is a typical horror convention. the title comes up with a loud shuddering high pitched sound effect, which emphasizes the title and makes the audience jump. Where as in my film I have used a white Gothic font with no sound effect, the main title for insidious is a lot better than our film as it conveys the typical horror conventions in a more effective way, where we used no sound effect it didn't really stand out or make the audience feel anything, so to make it better we could add in a sound effect like used in insidious to improve it. 

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups? (e.g. comparison stills from your film and the wider media)

Our media product represents the stereotype of women being the weaker gender.  In typical horror/thriller films women are often represented as to being the damsel in distress; being vulnerable to men, and often become a victim of murder. We represented this particular social group by casting a female actress having her as our victim, we used special effect makeup to emphasize her vulnerability to the antagonist, by creating realistic bruises, cuts and contour to make her look skinny and weak to emphasize her vulnerability. Women are also represented as to being 'sexy' and 'beautiful' and are only seen as an on show item. to represent this stereo type into our film we decided to have the victim wearing trendy clothing with a low neck top, this shows she is a young weak youthful teen, but it also gives a sexual appeal as it shows her assets and figure. A film that i compared my social media group to was Friday the 13th where we can see a female victim has been murdered. in this we can see that she had been corned into a hole on a boat, this shows that she also had no where to run and was helpless like in our film when the victim is tied up. when comparing the stills you can see that in both the female victim has been brutally killed with the weapons on show in the scene, using weapons shows their weakness as they couldn't fight back as they had nothing to fight back with; again representing them as a damsel in distress. in the Friday the 13th still the victim has died with her eyes open, in films when peoples eyes are left open once they have died it often shows that they have not passed away peacefully, this shows us that she must have had a painful brutal death. In both stills camera angles are used effectively to show the weakness and vulnerability of the female victims, in Friday the 13th a high angle shot is used to show her weakness and in the still from our media product a canted angle is used give a negative eary effect which also emphasizes her vulnerability. Another social group could be unidentified antagonists, in Friday the 13th the antagonist is wearing a mask and in our film the antagonist is not shown so it creates an enigma for the audience as to who would brutally kill these young women and for what reason. 

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? (e.g. voice over analysis of the institutions that appear at the start of your film and the other titles)

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

The audience for our media product would be for 15 years old and over. The genre of our film is horror/thriller so I feel as though it would not be appropriate for anyone under the age of 15. We didn't make our target audience for over 18's because we didn't want a such a niche audience and found that horror/thriller genres appeal to young adults but also to teenagers. To make our media product appeal to a wider audience we made the film so that it would be suitable for a wider range of ages. When carrying out a survey to a class of students ages 16 to 17 asking what their favourite genre is, we found that 15 out of 20 students favourite genres are thriller, horror and drama, which is why this age group would have a great appeal to our film. The British Film Institute  have gathered statistics on the percentage of different aged audiences for UK cinema admissions in 2014, the age group of 15-24 had the highest percentage out of all ages at 33%. Using this age group as our target audience would mean that statistically our film would be successful as they are the most likely to view the film, which is why we chose this age group. 

This is Tallulah Cooper, she is 15 years old and currently doing her GCSE's at Rainham school for girls. In her spare time she likes to go to the cinema, bowling and shopping with her friends as she enjoys her social life. Tallulah's local cinemas are the Odeon in Chatham, Cineworld in Rochester and the showcase in Bluewater. she often visits Odeon the most as it is the nearest all though when she if shopping in Bluewater she may visit the cinema then. her favourite shops are Topshop, Miss Selfridge and Zara. her favourite films are sinister, the taxi driver and the hunger games. She goes to the cinema roughly 3 times a month depending on what films are out, which is usually with her friends and occasionally her family. She doesn't like to buy DVD's as she prefers to go to the cinema, she has a Netflix account so she likes to watch new films once they have been put on the site and being a 15 year old girl doing this is the cheapest option for her as she gets to watch a variety of films for a set price a month, she watches many different series on Netflix, some of these are Once upon a time, Pretty little liars and Orange is the new black. she watches the TV on a daily basis and has sky, this means she has access to the latest films on sky movies and various other film channels. Her favourite programs are the 100, silent witness and Dexter,  she particularly likes these programs, as she is very interested in investigation and drama. She has a great interest in many different genres of films such as horror, thriller, drama and comedy's. Tallulah listens to music on a daily basis, her favourite music artists are Beyonce, drake and Kanye West. 

I think that our film would appeal to Tallulah because she is a typical teenager that enjoys going to the cinema, Tallulah like a range of genres but likes to watch horrors when they are out which is why she would like our film. Tallulah likes watching investigation and crime related programs and films, which are features included in our film. If we were to show our film at her local cinema, she would probably like to watch it as it is similar to the programs and films she enjoys.

5. How did you attract/address your audience? (e.g. annotated analysis of your video)

To address my audience i created an online survey on survey money where i devised a series of different questions about film to find some information about my audience and what they look for in a film. Here are a few of the respondents that i got:

From there results I have found that my target audience like thriller films and they watch films very often so I feel as though a target audience of 15 and above would be suitable for my film. We also devised a survey in our class where I found that thriller and horror films were the most watched genre for our age group which would be 16-17 year old.

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

The first picture is of a computer, in the process of making the film the computer was probably the most important technology, we used the computer to do pretty much everything including our research and planning, setting up the blog, creating the production company logos, editing the film together and using all the programs to do so such as audacity, Sony Vegas, Microsoft word and Power Point. using the computer was a basic skill that I had already learnt to use, all though in the making of the film I have learnt to use programs for harder skills such as editing in which I used Sony Vegas and Audacity, Sony Vegas was the main program that I had used as I used it to edit the film together, I learnt how to create flashback effects, create titles, video effects such as black and white and low key lighting to create negative atmosphere and using different transitions so that there is continuity in the film. As a guide for using these programs I watched YouTube videos on how to edit in flashback effects and black and white filters, in which I had to increase the brightness at the end of each clip and the beginning of each clip to make the transition flash in and out. 

The second picture is of a Panasonic HD camera, which was used with the tripod in picture 4. In our original rough cut we used a Fuji photography camera, when looking at the footage we had found that the quality didn't come out very clear and we didn't use a tripod meaning the shots weren't steady and accurate, because of this we had to re film and decided to change the camera and use a video recorder instead, in which the outcome was a lot better. The camera in the process of making was also one of the most important pieces of technology as without it there would be no video footage,we used the camera when filming for both the flash backs and the present day shots. whilst filming for the present day shots i used the tripod entirely with the camera showing long shot angles and panning around the room. Where as for the flashback shots I used the tripod and hand held shots, during this i used close ups and canted angles, these were both very effective shots for the thriller genre as close ups are used to show emotion and more detail, using close ups I could show more detail into the girls wounds and face, this adds to the enigma as it makes the audience wonder how/what could have happened to her. Canted angles are also good as they give a negative eary effect as though something isn't right. When filming I wanted to use push ins and pull outs, I found this very difficult as I found it hard to film without the footage coming out unclear and shaky, to avoid this I decided to use a zoom as I found it was a lot clearer and more accurate than a push in. using the camera I learnt how to film in various different angles and increased my knowledge for camera work as actually doing it gave me a better understanding as to how it works. to get some advice on camera angles and how to film i spoke to a camera man from the BBC who is a family friend and he guided me as to what angles would look good and gave me some ideas for a thriller genre film. 

In the third picture is a pair of headphones, this is one of the basic technologies that i had used, I simply used these when editing to listen to the film whilst making it to make sure there is continuity and runs smoothly, we also used these when making the 999 call to listen to the sounds that we had recorded using the Pod-cast and to edit them together and create a phone call using audacity. We also used small speakers so that our group could listen too and for when we showed the film to others for feedback.

The fourth picture is of a tripod, which I had mentioned when talking about picture three. The tripod is used with the camera to get steady accurate shots, I mainly used the tripod when filming for panning and for tilt shots, I used the tripod for both the present day shots and the flashback shots, I used it to show the room to give a sense of location. before the making of the film I had never used a tripod, so it is a skill that I have learnt in the process and was pretty easy to use. when filming I found that you have to carefully move the tripod or it can come out slightly shaky and unfocused, in a couple of shots in the sequence i found that the camera work was slightly shaky and unfocused which would be something i would need to work on for next time.

The fifth picture is of a pod-cast kit, we used this to record the sounds and voices for the 999 call, when doing this I worked closely with my peer Beth Thomas as we worked together to make it. the pod-cast kit was used with a program called audacity, in which I had never used before so I used various different skills such as putting the clips together, editing the voices and changing the tones of them to make the girl seem more innocent and vulnerable and adding in different sound effects such as gunshots and creating white noise. we also used audacity to edit the sound track creating negative sounds, slowing it down, adding in white noise and intense sound effects. All though we had made the 999 call we didn't decide to use it as when getting feedback our spectators said that it doesn't work with the video so we took it out completely and just used music instead.

The sixth picture is of my memory stick, I have always used a memory stick to back up my work. having my work when making the film saved to both the computer and memory stick makes sure its extra safe and backed up if anything happens to it, I also used it to save work from my home computer to my school computer so that my work was easy to access, I used it to get work off of my teacher to help me with my knowledge of media which also helped me when filming and editing.

The seventh picture is of a computer screen, I used this with the computer that that i can see all of my work. I used it with all the programs of the computer, which I mentioned in the first photo. I needed the computer screen so that I could see what I was editing and to put effects and transitions on the videos.

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7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? (video comparison of the preliminary film and main task with voiceover)

Looking back at our preliminary task I feel as though I have learnt a lot in the progression to the full product. 

Being the editor, going from editing the preliminary and the final product my skills have developed massively, I have learnt how to use more complex effective programs such as Sony Vegas and Audacity. In the preliminary I used windows movie maker to edit the extract together, movie maker is a simple video editing program that lets you do basic changes such as adding in simple transitions, basic titles, filters and effects. when editing the preliminary I found that the program was very limited and I wasn't able to make the preliminary as creative and complex as it could have been, also the quality of the video once it had been rendered was not brilliant as it came out quite pixelated, the overall video didn't look very professional. There for I decided to use a different program called Sony Vegas, which is a program for making more complex films, it was a lot more complicated to I had to learn how to use it, to guide me I watched YouTube tutorial videos on how to do the more complex things such as creating the flashback effects and changing the brightness/colour of the videos, for the flashback I had to increase the brightness at the end and at the beginning of each clip so that it flashes in and out which created an effective flashback, for the flashback sequence of the extract I change the colour of each of the clips slightly to black and white and decrease the brightness to create low key lighting as I learnt that low key lighting is used a lot in thriller/horror genre films to create a negative dystopian atmosphere. Something that I could improve in this area would be to learn how to do more skillful editing, such as the smoke effect titles which I was planning on doing but could not figure out how to create the effect, there for I used horror themed titles, when doing this I looked at influential films like insidious and sinister and saw what titles where used and when, and the effects that they had, so I went along these lines. 

I was also the sound editor so I had to look for copy right free music that was fitting to our extract, the music track that I had decided on using was called red letter, the music is very intense and fits perfectly with our film as it exaggerates the enigma in our film, i edited the music slightly on audacity for when the camera shows certain objects in the film, for example when the camera follows up the knife the music gets more intense and high pitched to show its a relevant object to what happened in the crime scene. in our preliminary I didn't use a specific soundtrack I just used sound effects and edited them in. I didn't find this very effective as a lot of background noise was picked up meaning the narrative coming from the actors wasn't very clear. in the main task we was going to have narrative of a 999 call but when testing and showing our spectators we found that it didn't work so we just took it out completely, so instead I just used one soundtrack the whole way through, which worked well as when we got feedback from our rough cut our spectators had mentioned that the music was very fitting and effective for our thriller film. In our preliminary we made diegetic sounds by dropping pins on the floor and making loud shuddering noises rather than editing them in, this was quite effective all though we found that other background noises were also picked up like echoes and other students talking in the corridor and we couldn't cut it out because we needed the dialogue, which is why in the preliminary we just decided to have no video noise what so ever. 

Being the location scout I had to think carefully about where to film, in our rough cut we had chosen to film in my grandmas house in Lower Halstow. I chose this location as it is right next to the woods in which the woods are used commonly in thriller/horror films so we was going to incorporate them into our film. The house is very big and old so it was very fitting for our film. This was the first location we had filmed in for our rough cut but due to our lack of equipment we had to re film using a video camera and a tripod, so we had to film at my house in Rainham instead as we no longer had access to the first location and was very hard to get to. 

The Mise-en-scene for the preliminary was very basic as we had filmed in school, our performance could have been improved as it didn't seem very realistic. in our preliminary we used low key and high key lighting, we done this by turning off various lights, we created flashing effects by flicking the switch on and off. To improve this for our main task, rather than creating the effects in the shot I decided to create the flashing effects and low key lighting by editing them in after creating the footage. This make the video look ten times better as I managed to make the lighting exactly how I wanted it being the same in each shot, which adds continuity, I done this by turning the brightness down in each flashback shot at the same percentage. I also made the shots slightly black and white to make it seem more dull and negative. I found that one of the best parts of our film was the set, our spectators had said that the set design was very effective and looks like a real crime scene. when creating the set I used dust sheets all over the room to make it look old and abandoned, I also changed the furniture and changed the curtains so that the audience can clearly see the different between the past and present shots. We got professional makeup and wounds done by a special effects makeup artist whom which created open cuts and bruises, she also contoured our actor to make her look skinny and dead. we then laid the actor out on the floor and put blood around her with a knife. This was very fitting for our film as blood, wounds, plastic sheets and knives are used a lot in horror/thriller films as they are typical conventions that are used. To help me create the set I looked as various crime films such as the taxi driver which has scenes showing a crime scene, I looked at how everything was laid out and how I can incorporate this in my film. 

Something that we could have improved in our film would be how the actor was laid out on the floor. The body looked quite forced and in an awkward position so she didn't look very dead, this caused a lack of realism as it didn't look as though she was dead. So we could change the positioning of the body.