Evaluation
When we decided to make our film, we initially wanted it to be a horror/thriller movie. We wanted to show how teenagers are stereotyped in these types of movies, for example Halloween. Once we had started we also found that males dominating females also became apparent, there are not many films where women dominate men.
We decided to not make our female character a victim in our film, unlike many other films already out there. Even though the stereotype is there of the weak woman, in our film the woman is the last one standing.
We looked at various films that fitted into the horror/thriller genre and decided on the common theme of having a murderer and a victim. Being only a short movie two minutes long we had to try and achieve some tension and feel of unease when the unknown person enters the house and goes unseen upstairs. When the film finishes we know that James has been killed, but what happened to the murderer – did he leave the house again, is he still hiding, is the female in the movie the next victim. The watcher of the movie is free to continue the story on in his head.
The music in any movie can create mood, increase tension and add drama; we added suitable music into our film to help get the mood across to the audience in as we only had a short amount of time.
Our final media product represents a particular social group; that of teenagers and gender. We represent the first social group: teenagers, as being anti social. Our main character 'James' is shown as an over powering teenager, who likes drinking alcohol, showing how we are representing the first social group - teens as being anti social, so playing on that stereo type.
The other social group is gender, and for this social group we used a teenage boy and girl for representation. We wanted to show how males are shown to be more powerful and so try to dominate females. When we started filming we decided that it was going to be shown as the boy trying to force the girl to drink alcohol and then make a move on her. This would show his power, when he is forcing himself onto the girl. The girl would look as if she was weaker, to look over powered by this boy that is in front of her. Our girl does gain power when she decides to look for the boy, showing a slight glimpse of her gaining power by over coming fear.
The best institution to distribute our product would be a television company. Somebody like the BBC or Channel 4 often show short films in-between other programmes to fill out their airtime schedule.
The target audience in age for this film would be between fifteen and early twenty year olds. I feel that it would appeal to this age range as this is a horror/thriller film, and statistics show that younger people prefer to watch horror films, and of these young people, more women than men would watch. I feel that if we tried to appeal to an older audience they probably would not enjoy it as much. As it has a teenage theme, they would not take it seriously. I therefore feel that teenagers would most likely find a connection with the theme and therefore understand it and get enjoyment from the film.
Before making our film, we looked up statistics about our target audience. We needed to consider what they wanted in a good horror/thriller film, what they didn't like in horror movies, and what age of audience horror/thriller films were popular with. After looking at our research we found that our target audience would be 15-20 year olds.
We aimed to attract our audience by relating the characters to the age of the audience and by playing on the stereotypical roles which people might link too as well. Some of the issues shown in the film could be ones, which this age group could relate to personally.
We used actors in the same age range as the audience and kept the topic of our film true to life. We set the film in a city, on a typical street in a normal home. These were things that our audience would be familiar with. We kept the language in the film typical to the area where the film was shot.
Drinking, and binge drinking are things that teenagers are aware of now as stories of this type are increasing more on the news and in documentaries.
There were so many different pieces of technology that I learnt how to use through out the making of this movie.
The camera was the first thing I learnt how to use. I started with simple things first, attaching the camera to a tripod, how to zoom in and out and where to place the camera for the best effect. I had never used a tripod before, but even this most simple piece of equipment made the shooting of our film more professional.
Once we went on to filming, I found out the different shots we could use, how different angles would makes scenes work in a better way and how to use a camera when doing a point of view shot.
The lighting was another factor we had to take into consideration when filming. Not many scenes could be done in one take, so when we went to shoot again we had to make sure that the lighting was the same in the next shot. Not so difficult when you are dealing with electric lighting, but when you are dealing with sunlight you have to make sure that the lighting is the same, so that the shadows are in the correct place. If you do not do this your movie will look disconnected. You have to make sure that you remember this when editing too.
Once we had completed the film, came the editing and as I had never edited a film before I needed to learn how to use editing software. We chose to use Premier editing software on this occasion, and I found that although it was difficult to use at first I was soon getting to grips with things. . I needed to find out how to cut clips, how to put transitions into the movie, how to add music, and title graphics. In the end I found this to be fun to play around with and getting to know the programme better helped give me an understanding of what could be achieved with editing.
Another piece of vital technology I used was Blogger and You tube. When making this film we had to document all the stages in its making. These two programmes really did help with this task. Blogger was particularly useful; I had never used this software before and found learning how to blog intriguing, and how interesting it was to document and show people how we as new media students were going through this journey from beginning to end learning so much.
Whilst looking back at my preliminary work at the begging of the year, I feel that I have learnt a huge amount during a short space of time.
One of the first things we had to learn and master was how to use the camera properly. When we shot our preliminary film we had never used a camera before, so learning all the things we could do with it made things easier for us. We made mistakes, but soon learnt from them. We had to learn where to best place the camera, how far away you need to be from the actors and in the process of learning all these new techniques our shots became better and our filming skills started to improve. We also became better actors through the year, less wooden and more confident in our newfound roles.
Different camera shots and angles I have learnt can really give a good effect to your film. For example making people look overpowering by using a low angle shot, or really innocent or small by using a high angle shot is very effective. Learning all the different angles and shots at the beginning of the year, really did help throughout this film, as we tried out various ones until we got the right shot for each scene - patience was needed but it paid off in the end.
We experimented with lighting, which we found fun. I had not given much thought to this before but soon became aware how important this can be in a movie and how useful it would be to us. For example when filming a calm scene high key lighting should be used, however to add a more tense mood to your film you should use low key lighting, this makes the scene look mysterious and dark.
Programmes that I have never used before like Premier to edit seemed daunting at first, so when we were filming the preliminary film we used pretty simple effects. As the group became more advanced using the editing software we felt confident enough to play around with effects like fading scenes from one to another. We added title graphics and music, which we had not even thought of at the beginning.
I had never really thought much about the amount of work that goes into making a film, even such a short one as in this particular case. We spent a lot of time getting things to look realistic, like using the knife, and how to make the blood stains real and believable.
The main progression for us, was that we began to think in more dimension. We did not just take a movie of two people sitting down talking to each other in a brightly lit room, with very little dialogue. We had to think about adding interest to the film, using things like, narrative, lighting, different shots, continuity, angles, special effects. All these things were things we had to learn throughout the making of our film, some of them were easy, some of them were frustrating, but I hope that it has made me a much better movie maker.
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