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IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

For the most part our opening does not challenge the forms and conventions of a horror, it uses features such as jump cuts, settings in a forest, screaming and eerie music in the background with use of non diegetic sound. However it can be seen to challenge conventions as we have an all female cast, this goes against the norms of media products. The male gaze as identified by Laura Mulvey suggests that media products are structured around a masculine viewer, it shows women from a males perspective and will often portray male beliefs and attitudes. Our media product, however, sees the female characters through the eyes of another female and the storyline itself would move away from any masculine views. Therefore it challenges the unwritten rules of most media products, this could be a selling point for a product and make it stand out from the other media products available.

HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?When looking at the Traditional Segmentation Model I would say that our media product falls under the C1 classification and below. This classification is labelled as lower middle class with people in this classification likely to have occupations such as administrative or professional roles. The reason I did not put the product in B/A category is because I don’t think people in the middle to upper classes would find our product of any interest to them, they can be assumed to live busy lives and so would not have the time to watch our product especially as it has no real educational benefit. People who fall into the C1 category would be more likely to fall into our target audience as they can be assumed to have more of a part time job, or at least have more time for leisure activities, and so would be more willing to watch a media product for entertainment value. I therefore think that our product is aimed towards the lower to working class social group who adhere to the Hypodermic Needle Model in which audiences are influenced by media and are less likely to challenge what is being sold to them.

WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION MIGHT DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?

I would suggest that our media product is distributed on a platform such as Netflix rather than into cinemas. The reason for this is that our film has been made by an independent company, this means that it is unlikely to make much profit if we were to release it into cinemas. A compromise for this may be to release it at a film festival local to the UK such as Cambridge Film Festival, this way our product is seen by many but is known to be made by an independent company who are still making their way up within media production. Once shown at a film festival it may be necessary to move it on to Netflix if feedback is positive and we know that lots of people would be willing to pay to see it.

WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT?

When looking at Young and Rubicams cross cultural consumer characterisation model I would say that our media product would be targeted at ‘The struggler’, ‘The Aspirer’ and ‘The Explorer’. The struggler would be suited for our product as they like to watch films which are very different to their everyday life, our film includes supernatural themes and so is very unique and will take the audience away from the comfort of their mundane life. The Aspirer would want to watch our media product as they enjoy fashionable, popular things and as supernatural films are currently popular, for example American Horror Story and The Conjuring, they would be more than willing to watch our media product as it is widely popular throughout current society. The explorer characters are all about discovering new things, as our film is an independent production that not many people would have heard of they would enjoy watching our film.

  HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/ADDRESS YOUR AUDIENCE?

Our target audience is mainly women aged between 15-30 who are lower-working class. Therefore we tried to make our film opening as stereotypically ‘girly’ as we could, we did this by casting females only and by making the plot something that would attract more to females than it would to males. However we did not want to move away from the horror genre and so we edited the footage to look as dark an eerie as we could with the use of jump cuts to add to the suspension and eerie feel of the product. As the age rating for our film was a 15 we could not include any sadistic or sexualised threat, we planned to focus just on the psychological thrill aspect of a horror, keeping the audience guessing what will happen next, rather than including blood and guts, other physical mise-en-scene within the horror genre. We wanted to keep it as realistic as possible whilst still using supernatural themes so as audience members could still relate to the characters.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?

Within my role of editor I learnt a lot about the use of colour treatment within the editing programme Premiere Pro. As shown below I used the colour wheel to change the aesthetic of the final product, I chose to make it more blue to darken the scene and connote a sense of the unknown. I also learnt different techniques such as how to add moving credits into scenes and how to use the feather tool to accentuate certain parts of the scene more than others. After looking at different independent films I have learnt that an expensive camera is not the one and only way that you can get a good quality final product. For example, the film ‘Tangerine’ which was filmed using just an Iphone has been shown at the sun dance film festival. This proved that we could create a media product which was of the same quality as a major film production company could make without having a budget of thousands of pounds.

LOOKING BACK AT YOUR PRELIMINARY TASK, WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE LEARNT IN THE PROGRESSION FROM IT TO THE FULL PRODUCT?When looking back at our preliminary task I can see that we have come a long way, the first

thing I have learnt is how to place audio on top of video footage. In the preliminary task we used the audio that the camera picked up, this made it sound fuzzy and just in general was not of good quality, it also picked up surrounding sounds. In our main task, although we used non diegetic sound we did add diegetic sounds such as panting over the video with the use of a boom in a studio, after shooting. I have also learnt how to use the tripod to steady footage, although we did use a tripod in the preliminary task the footage was still shaky and uneven making it uncomfortable to watch. In the main task we ensured the foundations that our tripod was on were even and we secured the camera into place, we never shot a scene free hand as we knew this would make the footage inconsistent. I personally have learnt the most about editing, although I did not edit the preliminary task, as the director I over looked the process. Looking back at our preliminary task it is obvious that the editing process was not completed to the best it could have been, you can see this as some of our scenes have not been cropped fully and so the scenes jump awkwardly from one to the next. In our main task however I have spent many hours on the editing process and have sat down with the rest of the team, overlooked by the director, to ensure that our media product is to a standard that could be shown at film festivals.