Tuesday, 7 February 2012

Evaluation 7: Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Before even starting the task, i knew it was going to be hard for me as i had no filming or acting experience. I learnt about camera techniques, shots and angles. This was key for me as i was the camera man. I learnt about rules of filming such as the 180 degree rule which is generally never broken unless you want to confuse and deceive your audience. I have learnt how to appeal to the specific audience by carrying out surveys i would have never done.

Looking back on our preliminary task, me and our group as a whole have learnt a great deal in terms of editing, rules and filming. I feel that the knowledge and know how i have gained has helped me in the horror opening sequence task and helped us as a group to create a more complex product.

For the filming of the horror movie, we used a program called adobe premiere, we all had used this before as this is the schools staple editing software. So we generally knew what transitions were on offer to use, so not much was learnt. But as our film was so dark, it was hard to see so, our teacher taught us how to use colour contrast, this is where you can control the brightness or darkness of the film without tampering or affecting the overall quality of the film. We wanted to create a natural had held look to our film and Adobe did that for us.

To add to the media task, we had to file our progress and independent research on a website called blogger, this was knew to me because the only social network i bother with is Twitter, so i needed to get used to working it and blogging regularly. This once you got the hang of it, was an easy site to understand and use affectively.

Monday, 6 February 2012

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

In filming i learnt a lot about cameras and the use of cameras. As the camera it was a great learning curve, so i had to adapt and i felt i learned a great deal on camera work and shots. The software we used was Adobe Premiere Pro and as i used this in GCSE ICT for two years i was very comfortable with this product.

The software Adobe Premiere Pro was so useful and easy to use. We used it for altering the colour contrast. We did this because we filmed in the night so obviously it was dark so that was an issue at first, but due to the easy use of the affect, we got the video looking how we wanted to. Next we used Adobe for affects like fade and various other effects. We used effects to increase the visual appeal of the film. Without this product, i believe our film would not had been as good. 

To be honest i had never really used a camera before nor had i wanted to, but i had to considering i was the cameraman. At first it was confusing and difficult to get the hang of, but the more i used it the more confident i became. It was a very useful piece of equipment and it was helpful.

Google was the main search engine we used to find information about are plot, similar films, genre and character stereotypes. Obviously Google was very helpful.

I used youtube firstly to look at horror trailers and reviews for some insight into how to produce, portray and present our opening sequence. Then i used it to upload the finished sequence. I learnt how to add annotations to the film for the viewers. This was very helpful as it links in with our evaluation tasks. 


We used this recorder to tell our audience how the film was going to be produced. It helped that the recorder had great quality and that it was easy to use as i`ve never used it before.


Generally i`ve never bothered with sites like this before, so i wasn`t used to it, but eventually i got the hang of it. I learnt how to change the layout of my blog and the colour scheme of it. Just generally transferring different file types to blogger so its compatible. Log and edit all of my blogs in case of doing something wrong. 

Saturday, 4 February 2012

Evaluation Activity 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?


For our target audience we are using the letter code to define and locate our target audience.
  • A: Top management, Bankers, Lawyers, Doctors and other highly paid salaried jobs.
  • B: Middle management, teachers, many creative jobs e.g graphic designers.
  • C1: Office supervisors, junior managers, nurses, specialist staff.
  • C2: Skilled workers and tradespersons.
  • D: Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers.
  • E: Unemployed, students, pensioners, casual workers.
We decided to agree that the letter group E was an appropriate target audience for our movie. The age group will 16-24 years of age. Also letter group D and C2 would be another target audience. Generally to the students or the unemployed would watch movies or go to the cinema in their free time, especially for horrors. The age group 16-24 years of age is very specific to, young people are more attracted to horror as they are thrill seekers.

The photo we chose were of some steriotypical horror fans. They are pretty normal people who come from a working/middle class family. The clothes they were are normal and they are in our target age group. The music they would most likely listen to is rock, r&b or chart toppers. The people in the picture might be into soaps, dramas or TV shows.

They might watch our film because of the people in the film and the plot itself. The plot is about 3 teenagers going to a suspicious building and one goes missing, so the audience can empathise because they are of a similar age and might find it exciting and thrilling.

Thursday, 2 February 2012

Evaluation activity 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

There are certain similarities to the characters in question, the actor from our film i will be examining is Richard, and the boy from The Final Destination. Both are obviously males and are of similar ages to eachother so we can expect similar reaction and temperament. Both are quite confident males so you would`nt expect anything to happen to them. But you know as the audience, something will ultimately happen to them. Both character have fashionable clothing so this connotes when the film was made and set (20th century).

The differences you can expect is because we didnt have a budget, the actor in  The Final Destination will be a much better actor. So therefore he can portray and express his feeling more appropriately.  Another difference is in our film they are no females, whereas in Final Destination there are multiple females so this could bring out other feeling for the boy in Final Destination