Wednesday, 1 April 2015

AS Evaluation- Question 1

AS Evaluation
Antonia Georgiou




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

 A real horror movie has the following conventions:

  • Ghosts.
  • Blood/Gore.
  • Home alone.
  • Monsters and Ghouls.
  • Haunted house.
  • Possession.
  • Darkness.
  • Scary noises.
  • Dolls.
  • Deserted areas.
  • Devil.
Above are some of the few conventions of horror movies and now I am going to explain and show how our media product "The Playhouse" uses, develops and challenges and uses conventions of a real media product.

At the start of my opening, we used a real convention of horror where I was speaking on the phone. This is a very popular convention to use as it causes a worry for the audience of who is on the phone. We know this is a convention of horror as this is used in many films such as the "Scream" films.





As you can see from the two screenshots to the left we have used one of the conventions of horror from Scream which is speaking on the phone. Even though this doesn't sound scary it gives the audience a sense of confusion.

 Another convention of horror we have used in our media product which is used in real media products is an establishing shot to open the scene but the establishing shot is a dark scene and is scary. This is also a very popular convention of horror.


Here is a screenshot from our media product compared to a real horror movie which is a convention or horror.




 The first screenshot is taken from "Scream" 1 and below is a screenshot of also an establishing shot from my own media product. As you can see they are both conventions of horror as the shot is dark and has trees and bushes around to make it scary which will creep the audience out.










Another real convention of horror is darkness and we have used this convention of horror in our own media product as well a real movies. Darkness is a convention of horror as it makes the audience feel tense and worried for anything that could pop out.

As you can see from the screenshots from a real media product and my own media product, darkness is a very effective media convention as it is so simple but yet so effective as it scares the audience as when people see darkness they  always relate it back to horror. 












We also used close ups of facial expressions in our media product and this is also used in real media products a lot. Close ups of facial express show how the characters feel and in  horror films it is usually emotions such as Scared, worried and confused.

As you can see from the screenshots above from my own media product and scream, close ups are used in real media films too and are very effective. Without close ups we wouldn't be able to tell how the character's are feeling. The emotion the character is feeling will most likely also attach to the audience as for example, if the main character in a horror film is feeling scared as she feels someone is in her house the audience would also feel scared as they would be scared for what is going to happen.

 
Overall, I would say that my media product has many conventions of horror and has very similar conventions to real media products. I have proved this by going through my media product and real media product and pointing out the similarities and conventions used in both my media product and a real media product. 

 







AS Evaluation- Question 2

AS Evaluation
Antonia Georgiou




2.How does your media product represent particular social groups?
 In our media product I would say we challenged our stereotype as usually in a horror movie you expect the main character to be young and gullible towards everything. Even though the character in our movie was young, she was a mother and you don't usually expect a mother to be in this kind of movie so we went against our stereotype.


Representation of the mother: The representation of the mother is usually very similar in all horror movies. The representation is usually the mother being sweet and caring for her children and always very protective over her children. Representations of a mother are like this in horror films as when the audience see a caring mother they automatically assume that something is going to happen to the family. 

Mothers also have a representation of feeling safe in their homes as they are in their own environment and at their own comfort. When the horror film goes on all of these representations always change as the mother will feel threatened in their house and unsafe and also be worried if their child has gone missing or playing up.

Some examples of real media product mother characters is "Elisabeth Sue" who plays  "Sarah" in "The House at the End of the Street" and also "Lili Taylor" who plays the mother in "The Conjuring". Both of these mothers in their horror films are over protective and caring for their kids. These mothers in  real media products are also known as the typical mother and doing the following tasks...

  • Cleaning. 
  • Cooking. 
  • Looking after children. 
  • Taking care of the household. 
The mother in our media product also does the tasks above and we have shown this by starting our opening scene in the kitchen of the mother cooking and cleaning. 




Representation of the child: A child in horror films usually has the representation of being sweet and innocent towards the start of the film which always gives the audience a sense that the child will eventually change and become possessed or evil. This then goes back to the representation of the mother being worried and caring for their child like the mother in our film is caring for the child.

Some examples of real media product child characters would be "Linda Blair" who played the young girl in the "Exorcist" which was one of the scariest horror films of its time(1973) and "Chucky" who was also another child character in a major horror film. All of these characters start of sweet and innocent and turn out to be evil or get possessed throughout the movie which is how our film works.







As you can see from the screenshot above she is dressed casually and in clothes a mother would be wearing around the house. We went against a  typical stereotype as everyone would of predicted a young clueless girl to be in our media product so by changing the stereotype it would shock the people by seeing different. 

AS Evaluation- Question 3

AS Evaluation
Antonia Georgiou




3. What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Software and Evaluation:

Throughout constructing our product I have learnt a lot in terms of technology and how to use it. After finishing off filming we had to add after effects to our product b using a software called "Premier Pro". Premier Pro allowed us to add effects such as transactions, filters and many more effects. We could also cut and snip up our product to put it in the correct place. 

We used effects to make parts of our product litter/darker depending on what was going on in the scene and how we wanted the audience to feel. Premier Pro allowed us to do this by choosing a filter and then adjusting it to how light/dark we wanted it. 


*Screen Shot of editing on premier pro*

In other terms of using different softwares I also used Twitter and Facebook to share my finished product and blog with my friends and family to see what their thoughts and opinions were on our finished product. I can either share my product by sharing it to everyone on Facebook/Twitter or sending them a link to my blog (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCQQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fantoiageorgiouasmedia98.blogspot.com%2F&ei=pH7YVLTlNp2nggaghwE&usg=AFQjCNFWJOEbChaBC4KUfNrihf4JIoaD2Q). When people do view my blog and finished piece it is good for me as I can get some feedback on my blog and finished product to try and improve my product. 

Another important to my AS Media was my bog which was done through Blogger. Blogger allowed me to present my blog in a very professional and neat way. I would say Blogger is one of the best presentation tools I have used in terms of blogging. Blogging through Blogger is also a lot neater in terms of keeping everything organised and kept together compared to writing on paper where everything could get lost and messed up. 


As you can see from the screenshot to the left, Blogger is very organised you have a bar along the left hand side with all your options to your blog on and everything is very simply presented. 













With Blogger I was also able to carry on working on my blog on the go as I could login to Blogger and work on my blog at home. This was another positive feature to Blogger as I could really focus on my blog and this evaluation especially this way. 

Filming:

When filming we used a Sony handy cam camera to film our product as this camera has very good quality for what we needed it for even though it wasn't in HD. We also used a Tripod when filming to make sure the camera was steady and at the right angle so our product looked professional and tidy. 




The camera had good quality for when we wanted to film close ups which we needed as we recorded some close-ups to show facial expressions of characters in our product. 

We also needed clips of sound for our product to add on top of our product so we did this by recording the sound separately either through our phones (iPhones) or a voice recorder. The quality of recording sounds from our phones was very good as we used "Voice Memo" which is an app pre loaded on iPhones which allows you to record sound. This was a good way to record sound as it cut out a lot of background noise we didn't want as was very clear. 

Research and planning:

We had to do a lot of research and planning along side with filming our product and we had to create many things such as storyboards, a script and a mind map etc. 

For our storyboard we didn't use technology as we did our story board on paper instead of using technology to create it as we used technology to create everything else. With our storyboard we simply presented what our product was going to be about with simple pictures and a caption to explain. We also created a script and typed it up directly on blogger as we just wanted to type us a simple script so it was simple to read. 

Throughout planning everything we also used mind maps and a lot of not making to make sure we didn't forget everything and everything was organised throughout our research and planning. We also had to create a schedule for when we are going to film and also make time for working on our blogs, making a schedule really helped as we went along with the schedule and we didn't run out of time. 

We also pitched a few ideas that we had before deciding on our final idea and we presented our pitch through power point and putting each pitch on a different slide. This was a good software to use as we could clearly read each pitch and they were all presented in a neat way. 

Location Recce:

Before filming our product I took pictures from my phone (iPhone 5C) of the location we used for our product and mainly the places in the location we did a lot of filming in. The quality of the camera on the iPhone was very professional and the phone took vert detailed and good quality images of our location which were perfect for our reece. 


The software we used to put our opening scene together was "premier pro" and in the process of putting together our opening scene we learnt a lot about "premier pro".



As you can see from the screen shot above premier pro was a very professional software to use as there was many features we could use for editing, sound and putting everything together to make sure of opening scene looked professional and like a real media product would. 

These are some of the features we used when putting together our opening scene...


When we were filming we used a professional camera like someone would use to create a real product and also a tripod to make sure our camera was steady and looked real. 



As you can see from the screen shot above the image quality is very good and very still like a professional media product would be. The filters we also put on to make the background more gloomy and dark was professional as it was realistic looking instead of making the image look fake. This is also another convention of a real media product.

Once we finished editing we added titles and credits to make our opening scene look like a real media product. Without titles and credits our opening scene wouldn't of looked like a real media product at all as all films and media products in general have credits and titles on. 

As you can see from the screenshot above our titles and credits were very professional and looked like titles from a real media product. We used a software called "After Affects" to create our titles and credits for our opening scene as the fonts available were very professional and neat looking and also editable so we could adjust them to how we wanted

Overall I would say that I have learnt a lot about the technology I have used to create the product I have created as before starting to putting together my opening scene I didn't know about how to use a camera properly and how to adjust the zoom for example. I also didn't know about using software such as Premier Pro and Adobe After Affects. As I was using software such as these I learnt how to use them properly by practicing and also getting help from other. I also didn't know about blogger and how good blogger is in terms of creating a smart black, so overall I would say I have learnt a lot in the process of making my product.


AS Evaluation- Question 4

AS Evaluation
Antonia Georgiou

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

 The kind of media institution that might distribute our product would be an institution that promotes films to young people aged around 15-30. Anyone older would find the film a bit boring but anyone between those ages are most likely to enjoy the film and feel fear. The kinds of institutions that are real that could distribute our film would be institutions such as Dimension films and also Universal do some minor horror films which Is what our media product is focused on.

Dimension films have distributed films such as Scream, Halloween, Feast, The others and many more. Some of the dimension films I have mentioned are quite high in terms of horror but some are also minor such as Scream which is about a murderer who enters peoples houses. Scream is a little like our film as our film is set in a house with innocent characters and is also about someone being inside the house.  

Another good media institution that is a real one would be 20th Century Fox as this company is one of the biggest companies distributing films. I think it would be a good media institution for our movie as they distribute a lot of films and certainly a lot of horror films for a variety of different ages. 20th Century Fox would also be a good institution as it is a large conglomerate of a company so films made with 20th century fox are most likely to be put into cinema and be promoted film compared to smaller companies such as British Companies E.G working title where a lot of their films go straight to DVD.

20th century fox would of also been a good company to distribute our film as it has distributed a lot of  "mild horror films" across the years like ours is. Some examples of 20th century fox horror films which are mild would be "Alien", "Happening" and "Hide and Seek". 


For our own film we made our own production company named "Skeleton Productions". We named it this as Skeleton is generally related to horror which our film is based on and was a simple name for a production company. Dimension films like I have spoken about also has a very creepy but simple production company.



As you can see from the image of the dimension production company logo it is very simple and slick but is  creepy at the same time as it has a pitch black background like our own "Skeleton Productions" logo. 

AS Evaluation- Question 5

AS Evaluation
Antonia Georgiou

 
 
 
5. How did you address/ attract your audience?


We attracted/addressed our audience to our film "The Playhouse" coming up with an attractive name which will make people want to watch the movie from just seeing our title. The title "The Playhouse" will attract our audience as usually playhouses are portrayed as either fun or creepy and scary in terms of horror.

We have also attracted our audience throughout our whole trailer using some a lot of conventions of a horror such as mysterious and scary scenes, dark scenes to cause tension and left the end of our opening scene with a cliff hanger. We left the end of our opening scene with a cliff hanger of the mother looking confused and worried towards thinking someone was upstairs and from behind a face appearing. This will leave the audience with confusion and will make them want to watch the whole film which is attracting the audience.



We also attracted our audience by using good digetic and non digetic sound to make the opening scene seem realistic and good quality. We also made sure our editing of the opening scene was good and not too heavy to make sure again it was good quality. The narrative in our opening scene would again also attract the audience as the dialogue set what the film was going to be on and what was going on at the time which again will also attract the audience.


Our movie is quite similar to real films such as the exorcist and other films which include possessed and weird behaved children.

The exorcist is a film based on a possessed evil child who lives with her mother (Same characters as our movie) and her mom tries to get the devil out of her with the help of the priest. This film was a very successful film and was one of the biggest horror films of its time. If our film has similar aspects to this the exorcist then our opening scene should definitely attract people to watch it.

Overall I wold say that our opening scene has and will attract our audience as we have many conventions of horror's in it and the storyline to the film its self will attract an audience.





AS Evaluation- Question 6

AS Evaluation
Antonia Georgiou

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

Whilst creating our movie we though that it is very important to profile an audience so we know our target audience and because our film is mild horror and has aspects of teen horror we thought the perfect target audience for our movie would be teenagers and young adults.

Teen Horror:

Some examples of teen horror movies would be movies such as Halloween and the scream movies and they are teen movies purely because they are mild horror and the content in the films attract a teenage audience. I think our film would fit into a teen horror as it has some features from the film "Scream". For example in scream the opening is a woman in her kitchen by her self and is on the phone and in our film we also have a scene like this.

Teenagers and young adults  also would like our film as teenagers and young adults like to be scared and feel fear and because of movie has quite a physiological feeling to it, it would leave young people with a fear of leaving the house, going upstairs and security.

As a teenager my self, I know that after watching horror films and from watching horror films I and others in my age group like to be scared and like to have the worry after watching a horror film.


A teenage/young adult audience is one of the best target audiences to aim for as teenagers like to use social networking sites, read magazines, watch TV and overall share, so when teenagers watch horror movies they will tweet and share on the internet about the film which is getting the film across to others as they are sharing it.

 As well as a young audience, our movie would also appeal to an American audience as our movie has some elements and American audience would enjoy...
  • British Home.
  • British Accents.
  • British Décor.
  • Set in the UK.
The following would attract an American audience as Americans are known to love Britain and everything to do with Britain so with our movie being set in the UK ad having British features it would attract an International audience.




AS Evaluation-Question 7

AS Evaluation
Antonia Georgiou

 
 
 
4. Look at your prelim task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression of it from the full product?

 When I just started AS media we were asked to complete a prelim task which was me and a partner recording for the first time using different camera angles. Here are some of the skills I have gained since the beginning ...
  • How to edit footage(filters, cropping, adding sound and general editing)
  • How to use the camera properly
  • How to create different shots with the camera (close up, long shot etc.)
  • How to use the tripod properly to make sure it is steady and looks professional for when recording.
I have improved on my editing footage skills by practicing and having a fiddle around with the software we use for editing which is premier pro and testing all the features to it. By doing this I improved my knowledge on it which was good for when editing our final piece (opening scene) as or editing for our opening scene went very well. I have also improved on using the camera a lot as at the start I wouldn't know all the features to the camera and how to use it properly which would of affected our filming if I didn't improve.

I have also learnt a lot from the start in terms of camera angles and I am now able to preform different angles and shots with the camera. For example at the start I was only able to preform shots such as long shots and wouldn't be able to move the camera with the tripod very well. I improved this by practicing with the camera experimenting.

By doing the prelim task I gained the basic skills to editing and filming which was very important as without getting the basic skills I couldn't progress to where I am now. I am now at a stage where my editing skills are more advanced compared to when I was doing my prelim task.

By doing my main task, opening scene I again learnt a lot as me and my partner in creating the opening  helped each other with the different things s we both learnt from each other.  

Overall I would say from the start I have gained many more media skills compared to the start and the skills I have picked up from the start have very handy along the way .