Winter Sunset (Finished Film!)

1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of real media

The genre for our film is horror, we have gained much inspiration for our horror film through research in the genre and audience. We carried out our genre research by watching previous films of the same genre (and some of other genres) and we carried out our audience research through a questionnaire. The film follows a pretty straightforward linear narrative structure, synonymous with the horror genre. Looking at what we found through genre and audience, we developed, used and challenged forms and conventions to appeal to our audience creating syntagms through various combinations of paradigms.T

Mise-en-scène, representation and Performance

The above screen-grab shows how we have used forms and conventions of the horror genre in our setting, the setting of this scene is in a creepy wood, this is used in so many other texts of the same genre such as, The Ring and Blair Witch Project. We developed conventions of the setting as we have used a huge field in the background, this is to give the audience the feel of agoraphobia and that there is no way of escape. We challenged conventions of the horror genre here as usually, horror films are set at night whereas our film is set in the day time, this we felt was equally as effective as night time as it is shot midwinter during a sunset.

We used forms and conventions of the genre in our representations as the two protagonists in the film are teenage white males, I feel as though this is effective because that is the target audience, this comes from the idea that people want to watch themselves on screen. We developed the conventions of the horror genre's characters as they are both suggested from a school and are entering into impending doom to become accepted into a club, accepted into a social group. We challenged conventions here as usually horror films have teenage girls as the protagonists as they are seen as more vulnerable. I feel as though using two males was effective in our film as it puts the audience into the film as they can put themselves into the characters.  

Cinematography 

Our film uses forms and conventions of Cinematography in other horror films as we use long shots to show huge open spaces and how there is no escape for the protagonists (above) and close up shots to show the horror of the protagonists and shock the audience with the antagonist (Below)

We developed forms and conventions with the cinematography as usually, horror films such as 28 days later use fast camera movement to add suspense and horror whereas we used still shots throughout, I felt this was effective as it kept the film suspenseful and added tension as the audience knew something was building up. 

We challenged forms and conventions in cinematography as we used pans, in the image below, the camera pans down the tree revealing the dead body, this is effective as it slowly reveals the horror to the audience.

Editing & Sound

We used forms and conventions of the horror genre in the editing as we used black and white image paradigms with static sounds creating the syntagm that someone is watching the characters through a bad tv, this arbitrary sign was an inspiration from and horizontally reference of the ring. (Below Image)

We developed forms & conventions of editing in our film as we used titling over images of a haunted play park and tower (Below) these were all iconic signs within the horror genre, the semiotics of these scenes are quintessentially part of the horror genre and our audience would be familiar with it as they would have seen these images in previous films of the same genre. 

We challenged forms and conventions as in the below scene, we used cuts fades and dissolves when the protagonists are walking up the hill connoting time passing by, this is a convention of the documentary genre that we used in our horror film.

We also used conventions of the horror genre in the sound as we kept a subtle haunting soundtrack underneath throughout, this built up tension and used chords and strings synonymous to the horror genre, occasionally having loud drums when suspenseful scenes unveil (Below) I feel this is effective as the audience would distinguish the type of music from previous horror films and would also perhaps have recollections from previous horrors they have scene with that kind of music which will add to their fear.

Below are screen grabs of the editing process

2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

As you can see in the above image, the two protagonists are white teenage males, We used forms and conventions of the genre in our representations as the two protagonists in the film are teenage white males, I feel as though this is effective because that is the target audience, this comes from the idea that people want to watch themselves on screen. We developed the conventions of the horror genre's characters as they are both suggested from a school and are entering into impending doom to become accepted into a club, accepted into a social group. We challenged conventions here as usually horror films have teenage girls as the protagonists as they are seen as more vulnerable. I feel as though using two males was effective in our film as it puts the audience into the film as they can put themselves into the characters.  

3: What kind of media institution would distribute your media product & why?

The main media institution that I had in mind to finance, distribute & produce my film was Warner Brothers. The reason why I chose this institution was because of previous films they have distributed held similar forms and conventions to the opening of the film we made, such as: The Wickerman (2006 LaBute), Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003 Nispel) & A Nightmare on Elm Street ( 1984 Craven). Warner Brothers are well known for these films and audiences may want to watch our film on the basis of enjoying the said films and wanting a similar experience.

Another reason why I feel as though Warner Brothers would make an excellent institution to distribute our product is because it is one of the major film studios and is well renowned for huge Hollywood blockbusters such as the Harry Potter trilogy. Also as our film is aimed at a reasonably mainstream market and is not an art house film, we would want the advertising that Warner Brothers would give to create awareness of our film to make more money. Warner Brothers boasts a vast portfolio of films which have engaged and attracted audiences for almost one hundred years, it is a well established and respected company within cinema.

I would want my media product to be distributed to cinema multiplexes around the world and U.K, such as Cineworld and Vue Cinemas, (who took over Warner Brothers flagship cinema company 'Warner Village'). These cineplexes are an ideal place to market my film as it is where a mainstream market go to watch films, couples go on dates which is quite a large percentage of target market. I have chosen to use these institutions to market my product over small, 'art house' cinemas because my film is aimed at a vast mainstream market and not a small academic circle.

The institutions that would advertise my film are TV, Cinema & advertisements on the streets E.G bus shelters and billboards.

4: Who would be your target audience for your media product?

5: How did you attract/address your audience?

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

The first piece of technology we used during our construction and research/ planning and evaluation stages was Blogger (Above). Our group each set up our very own blogger site individually, this is a prime example of how our group used the internet 2.0 during the planning and research stage of making our music video and digipack. We all had a Blogger password hat we each used, and shared the same dashboard. Sharing the same dashboard allowed us to view each others blogs and discuss posts and items we put on. We were also able to add videos and images each other uploaded. This shows how consumers can be producers as we were able to manipulate this website to show our ideas. 

During the research and planning stage of our film, we used google to search for images and inspirations for our film. 

•Google was extremely useful as it is easy to use and has so many images for us to draw inspiration from. Not only were we able to use google to search for ideas, we were also able to use it to get onto other websites on the internet.

Above is Youtube which is a mass online video sharing community. Youtube is a prime example of internet 2.0 that we used during our media coursework, we were consumers in that we could view current short films and trailers for feature length films during our research and planning stage to gain inspiration for our film, we were producers in that we could upload films and then add them on to Facebook (Below) and get users to comment.

Above is Facebook, Facebook is a global social networking site that was extremely useful to us when making our film. Facebook is another example of the internet 2.0 as our audience were able to consume our media work that we uploaded but were able to produce as they could comment on our video and give us audience feedback, this was very useful in the evaluation stage of our film. 

Facebook was also extremely useful during the research and planning stage of our media work as we were able to ask our targeted audience for ideas and feed back on our ideas when creating our short film.

For editing our film we used Final Cut Express, which is editing software for the macs that we used, above is an example of us using final cut express when constructing our film. Final Cut express was extremely difficult to use at first as a beginner, but after using it over the course of creating our film, I found it got easier and I am now confident with it. Final Cut was brilliant and enabled us to create effects and images within our film that no other software could. Final Cut was also very reliable and never froze. 

We used final cut to edit and cut our film, using the various effects it had to offer. The effect we found most useful throughout our film was desaturation during the flashback scenes, this made our music video black and white during the flash back scenes and gave it the whole theme that I feel makes it stand out as a strong horror film. We also found the sound editing tools useful as we were able to add on music for effect and to add in sound effects.

Above is an image of an iMac, the iMac was (like Final Cut) difficult to use at first as I am used to windows. After a while I got used to its features and software and I am also confident in knowing my way around a mac. Our mac allowed us to use a number of tools such as Final Cut (above), Safari (which is the internet explorer of the mac that gained us access onto the websites we used). We were also able to use Citrix which allowed us to get onto our emails to share information with each other if my other group member was not using a mac.

When exporting our film, we used QuickTime player, this was an extremely useful tool as we were able to put our film into a good viewing format to show our teacher when we were getting feedback, it also allowed us to gain feedback from our audience who we invited into the editing suite to view our film.