Evaluation Question 7

Q7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking at my preliminary task, I feel that the preliminary is very different to my main production, the preliminary task was very silly and had the same shot over and over again. The genre of the preliminary is also very different to the genre of the production. For our preliminary, we had a very comedic and cheerful genre, and for our main production, we decided to go for a more serious genre which was an action/horror hybrid.

For the camerawork of our preliminary was predominately an over the shoulder shot of one of the characters when the other is talking, we also did a few long shots and an extreme long shot that tracked Owen’s character. In our main production, we used as many different shots as we could, we used an extreme long shot, a long shot, a medium shot, a point of view shot and a close up. We wanted to use a wide range of different shots for our main production and we wanted to make some of these shots creative to show off what we can do, one of these shots that shows our creativity is the CCTV camera shot, which was filmed with a GoPro camera that was placed on a shelf near the ceiling. Another creative shot we used was the point of view shot where you see the scene through the protagonist’s eyes, this shot was creative because we darkened the shot and added a slight red overlay to make it seem like the protagonist is battered and tired.

Our dialogue in the preliminary task seemed very awkward and not realistic at all as it was all improvised, we also sometimes started smiling during the dialogue in it too, which we fixed in the production. The reason behind the awkwardness and unrealism of the dialogue in the preliminary is that we did most of it first take as we didn’t want to spend too much time on it as the quality of it wouldn’t affect the mark given. For the main production, we did many takes of the same shot and rehearsed some lines before we filmed a shot so we could make it as realistic and make the acting look natural. This payed off for our main production as throughout the majority of it the acting and dialogue sounds and looks much better than in the preliminary.

Another thing we worked on was colour, as the two genres we went for were very different, the preliminary was supposed to be comedic, light-hearted and silly, which would need bright and cheerful colours like the whites and blues in the background, whereas the main production had very dark colours, like the grey bricks on the wall, grey concrete floor, a dark room, and even the navy and black of the protagonist’s clothes and the full black attire of the antagonist are both dark colours.

Evaluation Question 6

Evaluation Question 5

Evaluation Question 4

Q4. Who would be the audience to your media product?

I think the audience for my production would be someone who likes watching action films with cheesy fight scenes and also someone who enjoys jump scares, as tension can be difficult to make in films and the easiest way to scare someone is to make them jump. I also think that the audience of my film would be the younger demographics that are around 16 to 22 years old as the film is not sophisticated enough like a spy film made for an older demographic, and the film look like it would become something a teenager would watch, even though it has no budget and it would not be a very professional film.

The audience would also be someone who likes to watch amateur films and likes to see small budget and bad quality films because that may be what my film would turn out like. Our audience would also be somebody who likes to see people who are enthusiastic about film and have to start off with no budget and no real camera or lighting equipment, as our camera and camera light was an iPad Air with an iPhone with the torch on held just below the camera lens. They would also be someone who is interested in seeing films made by groups of friends and people that make a film for fun and not for any profit, and is a film made just for fans of certain genres, like action/horror which is our film's genre.

If the film had a bigger budget I would feel that it would bring in a mainstream audience as we tried to base our main character’s actions on the actions of Jigsaw from the Saw films, and his aesthetic features of all black clothing, a white face (but not a mask in our film) and dark eyes from the murderer from the Scream series. The mainstream audience would also be a wider demographic, as it would still be aged at teenagers, but horror and action fanatics of all ages would want to come along and watch it.

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 1

Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 

I think our media production goes against conventions of a normal horror film as the protagonist finds it easier to get away from the antagonist and also it is more like an action film than a horror film. The protagonist is stronger than a normal protagonist in a horror film and the antagonist is less creepy and/or scary than an antagonist in a horror film, as he seems more like a mentally unstable man.

In some ways, the production does fall into the conventions of a horror film, as the non-diegetic sounds used are sounds and music associated with horror films, as we used unnerving ambient sounds, and deep cinematic booms. The setting we used was also conventional, as it was a bland looking room with various tools in the background. The chair we used was also very bland and cheap to make it look like several people had been there before. But also in other ways, our production does not fall into the conventions of a typical horror films, as the protagonist is stronger than the antagonist right from the beginning, and also attempts to kill him. It also has conventions of an action film, which is what we wanted as we decided to go for an action/horror hybrid for our genre.

I feel that the ways in which we have conformed to the horror convention and the way we have swayed some parts of our conventions to the action side has been successful, as we have managed to make a good production out of it. We also managed to get a good balance between the two genres, as the start was very much on the horror side, as there was tense music, loud noises and it was very dark. The ending part of our production was aimed to be more action movie, which we tried to make with the soundtrack having faster drum beats and a faster tempo. We also kept some aspects of horror, as we kept the lighting quite dark, and we also used the same static effect as in the opening parts to make the title disappear at the end.