'Phright' - Evaluation.::

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

"The conventions that we used in our piece are as follows; over the shoulder, point of view,  two shot, long shot, close up shot,  low angle shot. We felt that these were suitable for our thriller because during the research process we found that most of the movie intros that we looked at had several of the shots that we had been researching. All the movies that we watched influenced us a lot when it came to the story line, the music, the shots basically everything. We found that most of the thriller intros were generally the same when it came to shots. They either had a point of view shot with no music or a a long shot with fast pacing music.  The movie intro that influenced us with our story line was 'Kiss Me Deadly' , we were really intrigued with the shots that they had and the tension that the shots created when they were ordered as they were. We wanted to make our intro as real as possible so we took a lot of time researching different types of music, shots, story lines and sets so we could get a more realistic and professional look as we could. We feel that we have successfully fulfilled that and we are really pleased with the outcome of this course."

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

"It represents the social groups of victim and murderer, this is done by building the tension in the opening by making the victim character to seem vulnerable compared to the murderer character. We made the murderer character seem the one in control of the situation by closely filming their facial expressions and making the point that they are chasing the victim so that they are viewed as in control and the victim is viewed as vulnerable."

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

"Cinemas would be the first place that we would distribute our product as it is more of a mainstream movie type product. We think this because of the story line we have made for it and also the way we have filmed the opening makes our movie more suitable to be shown in a cinema."

Who would be the audience for your media product?

"In our opinion, we feel that the most suitable audience for our product would be at the age 15 and over. The reason we decided this was because We felt that the content shown in our beginning credits would not be suitable for younger children, not only would thy get scared of it but they may not be able to follow the story line." 

How did you attract/address your audience?

"We attracted the audience by making our opening a cliff hanger. We did this by adding fast showings of clips and by ending the opening with lots of suspense and questions from the audience about what has happened and why.  This works well with our theme of a thriller opening as the suspense is evident from this.  The aim for our beginning piece was to give the audience as little  information as possible to them asking a lot of questions. The fast flashes create a sense of eeriness and makes the  audience feel as if that image is somewhat important. The music we used also helped in creating suspense in the opening scene; the use of a heartbeat and the the eery music adds to the setting. The aim of the music was to create a dangerous setting, and in the end we both feel like we have achieved that. "

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

"Whilst in the filing process we had a dolly that we were intending to use to create smooth running sequence for our beginning shoot, but the only problem was that our dolly was unsteady and the camera wouldn't fit onto it properly which meant that our 'smooth shoot' would have to have been created by someone with a steady hand.  We had a lot of camera troubles when it came to importing our 'Phright' footage onto the PC. Most computers either would recognise the camera or the camera would refuse to co-operate. Eventually, we managed to get our footage onto a computer but then we had further problems with that PC.  After spending two hours updating our blog, falling behind on our editing, we got our PC fixed and we could continue editing our footage.  After all of these problems we did manage to complete our piece. In our opinion, after the problems we had during the making of our piece we are not a big fan of the equipment we used."

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

"In the preliminary piece we found that the quality of the camera angles were quite simple and didn't portray  the full scene how we wanted it to. Compared to our final piece the preliminary is quite dull and boring. Holly found the preliminary to be plain and said that if she could go back and redo the piece she would have taken more footage. Which would then have given us a wider range of clips to use. We learnt that the more camera shots you use and the more footage you take the easier it is to create the full effect. It helps you to portray your movie how you wanted it to. In the preliminary piece we only went through it once which meant that we didn't really have a lot of footage to work with, if we had recorded it several times we would have  been able to edit a lot more and create a more exciting setting.  The dolly we used for our preliminary was easier to use than the one we used for the final piece which meant that some of our shots weren't as smooth as we wanted them to be, but after looking at the footage we both feel that it adds to the overall effect of our piece.  "