Evaluation- Xhuliana Deda: Evaluation Writeup
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
When thinking about our media product in terms of real media products, I think that we have been very realistic in the fact that we have tried as much as possible to transfer the elements of a real media into our own two minute introduction and I further on I will be talking about the different elements we had to include. As a group we came up with the idea of using a psychological thriller, whereby a girl and her best friends fall out, which the main character doesn’t want so she is seeking revenge and wants to kill them. For our psychological thriller to be successful there were a number of effects and transitions that we had to add in order to create that atmosphere, we had to think about tense music, low key lighting, various shots and angles that confuse the audience in terms of what the you think is going on, and the eeriness the settings present towards the audience.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
In our media product we used female teenagers as the actors as this is who our target audience is going to be. This represent that they are teenagers we were all dressed in casual clothing in order to tell us apart from somebody of a higher class therefore this means that who it is aimed at is very clear. It presents the stereotypical view of teenagers today as the root of Danika’s revenge is based solely on an argument with her friends, which is showing that actual teenagers are always out to make trouble and that they cant control their anger so they resort to violence. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I think that a low budget media institution like small independent companies would be perfect to distribute our film as it would be unrealistic for companies such as Universal at this stage to take on our film as it has no famous actors in it thus may not appeal to the audience, we also did not film in a professional studio so we did not have any high- tech equipment to create effects like CGI. Therefore I believe that a low budget film company is perfect for us as we have a unique film and they are more likely at this stage than a bigger company to take a risk as thriller films prove to be quite popular with audience. Once we have constructive criticism form those companies, we can expand and take our product to larger international companies, where if we distribute our film we could end up making profit, through advertising it first so people know about it and then putting it into the cinema and late on releasing it onto DVD.
How did you attract/address your target audience?
In order to address our target audience we conducted demographic research at the very beginning of our course; this was going to give us an insight on who we should target our film to. We found that women watch thriller films more than men do. We also carried out the same research to see the age groups that tend to watch this genre. We were then able to utilise this research and narrow our target audience down to 15-25 year old females of any race or nationality. We think this was suitable as the actors are all of that age group and so they can relate to the characters. We specifically didn’t choose a certain race/nationality as it is a film that anyone could be interested in watching. In order to attract our target audience we used mise-en-scene and editing to help us, we used various settings so we could give more variety to the audience and have them know that each setting is for something specific. The music I think was the most important part to add to the eerie atmosphere and really give a sense of tension to the audience watching.
What have you learnt about technology from the process of constructing this product?
Moreover in September I had limited knowledge in regards to the technology used in order to create a media product, now on the other side I feel that I am able to identify different technologies and their purposes very well. In order to make a high standard piece of work a lot of technology is required and now I know how to use much more software such as Adobe Premiere (which I would not have been able to experience using if not for Media). I have also had the opportunity to experiment with a camera and tripod and putting what I have learnt to do with the camera into practice. However I did not anticipate the sheer amount of technology needed to create a two minute introduction, having said this, the technology have vastly helped and improved our work. I think that Adobe Premiere was one of my favourite piece of software to use as the editing was something I had never before done and through it I learnt how to use different effects/transitions and while learning this our film was coming together also. Overall, technology was used in every aspect of the project and without it, our project as a whole (including blog and film) would have lacked quality.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Reflecting back on out preliminary there has been many things I have learnt since I first started to completing the finished scene. I think the way I coped was by planning every step. When doing out preliminary we had a set task given to us and we were told how to do everything from the shots to how we had to sit. However since moving on to making our final product we had to be extremely independent in order to achieve what we wanted. The first obstacle we had to overcome was actually thinking of a plot, which was slightly altered numerous times until we had something that would work with the genre and that we were able to with the limited equipment we had. We looked at opening scenes from other thriller films and picked what we thought was best for us, as you can see in the blog post ‘initial ideas’. Before we even started filming, through looking at other thrillers we were able to obtain the generic camera/shots/angles mise-en-scene etc used in thrillers so we could in someway incorporate it into our film. After a lot of analysis into the genre and consulting with each other we decided on psychological thriller as the genre for our film. From our preliminary to our finished task we improved greatly in using different camera shots and angles and making the film flow better. In our preliminary we just used medium close-ups and close-ups which can be used in most genres, however our scene to tie in with the genre we used POV shots etc and we learned how to use transitions so it snappy instead well put together.
