Main Task - First Born - Final Film

Main Task - Evaluation - Question 1

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

The link below will take you to my video answer for this question.


Media Evaluation - Question 1.

Main Task - Evaluation - Question 2

How does your media product prepresent particular social groups?

The main way our film represents a particular social group is by the main antagonist being a teenage girl. She represents a moody and unsociable teenager which is a stereotype to how teenagers are portrayed. The female antagonist looking after the baby can represent gender than females are more associated with babies than men. In the interview scenes the girl seems very disconnected from what is happening and very much in her own world and not facing the reality to what she has done, this could represent people who have had a mental disability and how they might act under mistakes and stressful situations they are put under. We liked the fact that the young girl babysitting was an antagonist, as in most popular thrillers you see a girl babysitter is normally represented as vulnerable and the one in danger, that you wouldn’t expect it to be the opposite with the babysitter being the dangerous suspect in our film. We haven’t represented a typical teenage girl as seen in most films to be happy, hyper and sociable, instead we have gone for the opposite to have the girl being disconnected to the real world and not looking as though she fits in. You see when she is babysitting that she looks like a normal girl just maybe more moody. The clothes she wears and her make-up all done are what you’d expect to see a girl of 18 to wear when just relaxing to babysit, however you see in the interview room she is completely different, as if she has changed suddenly from that one night. She seems run down and has no make-up on and looks tired, whilst only wearing a plan top with tracksuit bottoms on.

I think our opening is similar to the deconstruction our group did of ‘Girl, Interrupted’ as both main characters are teenage girls which both seem to have psychological problems. Both girls seem to be detached from real life and don’t like how there life has turned out.

Main Task - Evaluation - Question 3

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

The type of institutions that might distribute our film would most likely distribute other horror and thriller films. I researched the two deconstructions our group did, ‘Girl, Interrupted’ and ‘Don’t Say a Word’ to find out what institutions distributed these films. Girl, Interrupted was distributed by Columbia Pictures and Don’t Say a Word was distributed by Village Roadshow Pictures, both these institutions are major American film and distribution production companies which produce many different genres of film such as The Grudge, 50 First Dates, House of Wax and Sherlock Holmes. The production company we did was Fear Driven Films. This is an independent film company which produces thriller/horror/drama films. This would be a good institution to distribute our film as it distributes other films in the same genre as us and it is also a British production company which it good as our film is British. I think our film could be distributed in cinemas, on DVD or on Blu-Ray. The audience feedback we got for our film opening agreed that they think they could see our film in cinemas as the suspense of our film would be good to be seen on a big screen to get a better thrill. I also think as our film could be shown in cinemas once released on DVD it would be good to be able to show on TV Box Office.

Fear Driven Films Link      

                                                                            













 Columbia Pictures Link

Village Roadshow Pictures Link

Main Task - Evaluation - Question 4 & 5

Who would be the audience for your media product and how did you attract/address your audience?

The audience we thought our film would be for would be for teenagers and adults who enjoyed thriller/horror films. We gave the certification for our film a rating of 15 as some of the scenes throughout our entire film could be disturbing and not suitable for young ages, however as there wouldn’t be much gore, sex, sweating a violence in the film we couldn’t give the rating of our film an 18. The audience feedback we got for our film for the question ‘What audience do you think this film attracts? ’ we got a number of responses were mainly agreeing with what we targeted at which was teenagers/adults or anyone who enjoys thriller films. We thought about what audience might relate to our film the most and we thought that teenagers, mostly female and young mothers would relate most to our film as the main character being a female teenager, who had recently lost her own baby. How we attracted our audience would be by advertising and social networking. Advertising is the best way to attract a wide variety or people to create a much bigger audience. Advertising such as trailers and posters around towns and cities would be a really fast way of attracting an audience. We created a survey for our film to get audience feedback and sent it over Facebook along with our film, this would have had attracted a lot of people as social networking is very popular now that many people would be able to forward our film to other people for them to watch. This would make people become more aware of our film.

Classification for Films – British Board of Film Classification (BBFC)

Classification 'U'

Classification 'PG'

Classification '12A/12'

Classification '15'

Classification '18'

Main Task - Evaluation - Question 6

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

Main Task - Evaluation - Question 7

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

I feel since the preliminary task we have learnt a lot more about the different technologies used in making a film that we have become a lot more confident in doing so. I think as none of us were acting in the main task, unlike the preliminary task, we all had a chance to film and decide on the different shots and angles used. This made use more confident in using the camera and knowing how to work it. In the preliminary task we didn’t use the camera very well and it seemed more like a homemade video, where as our main task actually looked like the opening of a film. It was much better having Sophie Todd acting in our main product as she is an A-Level drama student so she knew how we wanted the character to act and behave and she played the character very well to how we wanted her to come across to the audience, whereas in the preliminary task two of us out of our group, me and Hayley, acted in the film, whilst Rosie filmed, this wasn’t so successful as this was the first time we had acted and weren’t used to trying to act like another person. Because of this our preliminary task wasn’t filmed as we pictured it in our heads. We wanted to create a horror film for the preliminary task but as we couldn’t act it changed to more of a comedy.

The Following - Preliminary Task Link

The biggest improvement I think we could make was our time management as we left our filming to very late on which meant us having to put in a lot of work to get the editing done really well, as we had a lot of time for the editing our film did end up a success.

The shots and angles in our main task compared to our preliminary task show a much wider variety. I think this is down to the research we did for our main task. As we had much more time to plan and research for our main task than we did for our preliminary task, this meant we had a clear understanding or what shots our film would consist of and were able to plan ahead to make sure we had this variety. I’ve learnt that you need a lot of time for planning and research if you want your film to be successful so then when you come to filming it can be done much quicker and smoothly.

First Born - Main Task Link

We spent a lot more time on Final Cut Pro for our main task than we did for our preliminary task so we also learnt the amount of time you need to spend on this software to make the editing in the film perfect and to be able to use all the different effects it has to offer to created more of an interesting film.

Overall I feel I have learnt a lot since our preliminary task as our film was a much bigger success than our preliminary task and the different technologies I have learn in helping to make this happen with my group.

Main Task - Audience Feedback - Survey Results

Main Task - Audience Feedback - Survey

Main Task - Don't Say a Word - New Thriller Deconstruction

Dont Say a Word (Link to opening scene)

The film starts with the opening credits and production companies. The diegetic noise or background traffic and trains lets the audience know the film is based in the city. The first shot shows that the film is based in San Francisco, you can tell at the shot shows The Golden Gate Bridge located in San Francisco. The tracking shot of the city gradually starts to get close into the city so the audience can see the location better. The next shot is of a train, with the titles reading ‘Williamsburg, Brooklyn, November 1991’ this tells the audience exactly where they are in the film and at what time. The camera then pans over a building and stops on a clock positions at the front of the building. This could mean that the time being shown is a big significance at this point in the film. The camera then tilts down to see two men walking out of the building dressed casual and looking a little suspicious with their body language, with their hand inside there jacket pockets and trying to rush out of the building. This could make it seem as though they have just done something wrong.

The camera then tilts further down to see a close up of a man’s face in a car mirror, this shows the man’s perspective is the same as to what the audience was seeing. The man then looks at his watch showing the time of 3:55pm and then looks back at the clock on the building. This then ensures the audience that the time is a definite indicator to something about to happen, it shows the importance of the time. The next shot is a close up of him smoking the last bit of his cigarette in the car with another man, this could show that they have been waiting to see someone or waiting for something to happen. The other man has an earpiece in which indicates the importance of these men. This shows that they are waiting to hear something and could be involved with the police or special agents. In the background there is another man talking but which doesn’t seem to be to any interest to the other two men trying to concentrate on what they are doing.

Main Task - Girl, Interrupted - New Thriller Deconstruction

Girl, Interrupted (Opening Scene Link)

The film starts with the opening credits and production labels showing, the non-diegetic music starts very quietly building up the suspense. The orchestral and acoustic music gradually builds up letting the audience know the film opening is starting. The establishing shot is a mid-shot of a window, from which looks like the inside of an abandoned warehouse. The camera gradually pans down the walls until you get to a girls face. She looks watery eyed and staring as if she is not aware of what is going on around her. She then looks down and you see her stroking the face of another upset girl. This makes the girl look like she is strong willed and has more power. The next shot is a wide shot of another girl in the corner of the room crying, this makes the audience feel a little awkward as the atmosphere is awkward and depressing, the audience doesn’t know what is happening at this moment and why they are so upset. The main girl seems confused to wear she is or she is taking in the surroundings of where she is. She seems a bit on edge as if she is waiting for something to happen. The next shot shows broken glass on the floor which could suggest there was a fight that has happened and that how something has become broken.

The voice over of the main girl talking is making her seem like she doesn’t understand life, or she is disconnected from the real world. She associates herself with the word ‘crazy’, not showing the characteristics of a normal person as most people wouldn’t think themselves as crazy.

The last shot of the opening shows her looking into the camera as if she is addressing the audience and letting them know she is crazy and she is different. This can make the audience feel uncomfortable as most characters in films don’t look at the camera so the fact this disturbed girl is makes it seem as though she can see the audience looking at her.

Main Task - New Storyboards

 

Main Task - First Born

Main Task - Script

For the script of our film we decided that dialogue for our film opening wasn't important as it gives our thriller more of a sense of the unknown to the audience. We were going to have an interview happening with the main character Emily whilst she's sat in the consultant's room in between the flashbacks, but then we decided it didn't fit well with our film and was actually better without the interview as the film tells the story of what's happening without anything needing to be said. The only one bit of dialogue we have is where we have the close up on Emily's mouth and she says her name. This is obvious that the consultant has asked what her name is during the interview.