Media Evaluation

By Rachael Booth

Media Evaluation

Our film incorporates generic conventions in the scene where Amelia and Alexis are sat doing work and the killer try’s to strangle Amelia and Alexis pushers the killer to the side in Amelia’s defense. Amelia then only cares about herself and her own safety and runs for the door leaving Alexis alone with the killer. Our film challengers these conventions because the female characters Amelia and Alexis have more personality rather than conforming to the usual stereotypical characteristics of female characters in horror/ thriller films. Our film is similar to the film Paranormal Activity as we decided our film would have multiple endings just like Paranormal Activity has multiple endings. I am going to compare and contrast our opening sequence to the opening sequence of the film Scream. The film Scream starts off with an image of a phone which becomes significant to the story line later on in the film, whereas our opening sequence starts with Stacey’s character Alexis walking down a dark path alone, both opening sequences start with girls being alone in either a house or on there way to college. The location of the film’s opening sequence is also different as in Scream they are indoors and on our film we are outdoors, however they are both dark so this is a similarity. They are also similar in the way that both films are aimed at teenagers and include teenage actors/actresses. Another similarity is the main location is their college.

In our film there is an equal amount of male and female characters who are all in their teenage years and come from similar middle class white British families. Gender is represented in a stereotypical way throughout most of our film, however the scene stated above shows that for a short period of time Stacey’s character Alexis breaks the stereotype.

Our product could be produced by a major Hollywood studio because a major Hollywood studio would be able to afford the equipment and resources needed to make our film look more realistic. Our film is similar to the film Scream, as both our film and Scream’s main story line involves teenagers being stalked in college.

I don’t think our film would be an art house film because I think our film would appeal to a large number of people. I think our film would be shown in the cinema first then released onto DVD, then later released onto blue ray and then finally shown on analogue TV. As our film has multiple endings it gives the audience the opportunity to see the film on more than one occasion, which would result in us making more money.

I think our film target audience is anyone who is over 18 years old, but mainly between the ages 18 to 25. I think this because some of the scenes are inappropriate for under 18 year olds and also the characters in the film are in this age range so it would be easier for an audience with an age range of 18 to 25 to relate to the characters situations. I think our film would appeal to equal numbers of males and females because I think females could relate to Stacey’s character breaking the stereotype and defending my character, Amelia. Whereas the male audience could relate better to a simpler character like Amelia, who lives up to the stereotype by being very stereotypical and running away screaming. I think the most appropriate classification for our film would be an 18 because the weapons we use are quite easy to get hold of, bad language is use throughout the film and there are various violent fight scenes. www.bbfc.co.uk

As I have previously stated the target audience for our film is people aged from 18 to 25. Many people in this age group will still be at college, the characters in our film are hunted and attacked in college so therefore the audience will be able to put themselves in the characters shoes and realize that this could happen to them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaraRs35PyY We asked a small group of people what they thought of our film, the hyper link is above. One negative comment we got was that our title sequence was all white text on a black background and they found this a little boring and not very interesting.This would be something we would look at if we were given this assignment to do again. On a positive note one of the people we interviewed said that they liked the music we put over our film as it fitted in well with what was happening on screen.

For internal shots we used a Sony HDV 1000 camera as we have not used this type of camera before we had a few problems with it to start with, one of these problems was we managed to successfully assemble the equipment, however when it came to taking the tripod down we had a bit of difficulty, we overcame this problem quickly and easily by asking for help. As we hadn’t used this type of camera before we have developed new skills that will help us in the future. For external shots we used a JVC DV camcorder we had used this type of camera before in our previous preliminary task, so therefore our entire group felt confident using this equipment. To edit our film we used finale cut express, as we had not used this software before we had to learn how to use it. I personally found it quite difficult to use to start with however with more practice I feel more confident using this software.

For our film we had to do research into the genre and understand the classification of films doing this research helped us develop a better understanding of what kind of things we needed to include in our film. Also doing this research made it a lot easier for us to produce our film, as we already knew what shots we needed, where they needed to be shot, who was going to be on the shot and who was going to be behind the camera etc. from our preliminary task we gained a better understanding of continuity this was because in our preliminary task we thought we had shot everything fine but then when we came to edit it, it wouldn’t edit together properly because in some of shots we had a door open then in other shots the door was closed. I have improved my understand of shot types and where they should be used because on our preliminary I was mainly on screen so therefore I didn’t really get much opportunity to film. Whereas on this film I am not on screen as much which gave me the opportunity develop my camera skills.