Charlie's media blog: 2011

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

Our media product develops typical forms and conventions of a similar media product as we have the typical villain character which is perceived to be mysterious and dangerous, he is later found out to be the murderer. The type of genre we have chosen expects these conventions and would not be the same without them. We also chose venerable innocent teenage girls as the victims as again this is what the horror genre encounters. We chose a particular mise en scene when filming the murderer to emphasise the forms and conventions of a real media product. We haven’t challenged the forms and conventions of our chosen genre much because we wanted to keep as close to the scary aspect of horror as possible. We thought that if we started challenging the forms and conventions our horror genre may no longer become obvious and wouldn’t be as exciting to watch.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our film we have purposely chosen three different teenage girls to fit different stereotypes. For example we had a geek, “girley girl” and a follower of the “girley girl” (all characters were dressed in pyjamas to show it was a sleepover and late at night). Our first idea was to use a character with blonde hair as the “girley girl but we then changed our mind and choose a red head character to go against the stereotype. We did this so that our audience could hopefully feel they could relate to at least one character. We then had what looked like a male figure, as the murderer. We dressed this character in dark clothes such as track suit bottoms and a hooded jacket. The purpose of this was to create mysteriousness. We then again emphasised the mysteriousness by not showing the murderers face. We represented the stereotype by having the girls as the victims; we choose to do this because generally in the horror type genre this is the case. Girls are seen as much more vulnerable and innocent. If we had chosen teenage boys to be the victims it would not have been as affective. The girls were all teenagers(16,17) we wanted our characters to be late teens as they are perceived to be a little bit clueless and tend to get them self’s into bad situations. We then tried to contribute some youth language such as swearing in order to fit in with the social groups of teenagers.

What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?

The most obvious media institution that would distribute our media product would be YouTube. This is because our film has to be posted onto Youtube in order to be put onto our blog. Other main stream institutions is may be distributed on are social networks such as FaceBook. Facebook and YouTube are great and easy ways to get our film seen as the majority people have a FaceBook account or occasionally use Youtube to view videos. We could also distribute our product via film festivals this would be a great way to get our film seen because it promotes our film to a wider audience.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our film is generally aimed at young people who have a particular interest in our chosen genre of film. Generally we thought our film would be more appealing to girls. This is because our main characters are three teenage girls, therefore girls can maybe relate to the characters. This was our aim when coming up with ideas for our final film. However, it could appeal to males also because of its genre. Horror does generally appeal to males but our intention was to target young females. The use of language and action in our film would fit in more with the younger generation. At first we were aiming our film at ages 15-25 but after reviewing this we changed our minds and gave our film an age rating of 12. We came to this decision by looking at the definitions of each age rating on the internet. Age 12 showed a small amount of violence and bad language. So we therefore believe our film is suitable for ages 12 and above (but no older than 16/17). Although our age rating is 12 we think the majority of people who watch this film will be more in the region of 16 to 17 because this is the age of our main characters and we wanted our audience to be around a similar age so they could connect and relate to the characters.

How did you attract/ address your audience?

We wanted to attract as many people as possible to see and give opinions on our film. Therefore we made a simple questionnaire with the following questions?

· What genre of film would you say our media product is?

· What age group would you recommend watching this film?

· After watching our film would you be interested in watching the rest?

· If not, what do you think we should do to make our film better?

We then screened our film to several different people that fitted our preferred audience type and asked them to answer our questions, giving critical feedback. Various people said that they found it to be more of a comedy then horror.

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

We used a variety of technology to produce our project, including Macs, a Sony video recorder and a tripod. I learnt numerous skills in doing so, which I will be able to adapt to future assignments. Using the mac, we used various programmes. iMovie helped us edit our production, allowing cropping and additional effects to be put in place.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from the full project?

Doing our preliminary task was a useful and practical way of beginning to learn how to use different camera shots, angles and movements. Our preliminary had to include the following elements, these were; a short dialogue between two people, one character walking across the room, we also had to include several camera shots such as shot-reverse-shot, 180 degree rule and match on action (opening a door). After watching our preliminary task back we learnt that not all of the shots we wanted to achieve went according to plan. When filming the match on action we discovered that we had not filmed it completely right and it was obvious when watching it back that it had been done wrong. This made us realise to get a good precise final task we was going to pay much more attention to how we filmed each shot in order for it to look professional. Another thing that we learnt from our preliminary is that when filming the dialogue you need clear loud voices. Otherwise you will not be heard. All of the following that went wrong was a great head start when it came to starting our final project. We all ready had several ideas of what not to do and when things went wrong we had some previous experience from our preliminary of how to put it right.