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

Since the preliminary task I have learnt a lot about the equipment and the process of making a film.

Planning and Research:

After completing the preliminary task I thought that the planning stage of the project would be easy and that my group and I would come up with an idea for a film opening relatively quickly, but even though we thought of choosing the horror genre immediately the story line took us a while to think of. I learnt that if I search existing products and how they were successful then it becomes easier to come up with an idea that works. Another thing I learnt about film making is that even if you think an idea works you have to pitch the idea to see if others think it will as well otherwise it may not be a good idea. Another thing I learnt in this stage was how much planning was needed for props and the setting for when we were going to film as there had to be enough room in the filming space and enough props to make it look like a natural environment.

Filming:

In the preliminary task we had used a quite a few different shots so i thought we had covered it all however we had filmed in a large space and with a simple plot. In the film opening the room we had chosen to shoot in was a lot smaller so re-positioning of props and placing the camera in strange places came as a learning curve to me. Another thing that I learnt when filming was that we couldn't stick completely to the storyboard because as we were filming new shots appeared to us and we changed some of the shot angles and some of the continuity between shots in the storyboard didn't make sense so they had to be altered to fit the plot we were trying to follow. Team work was also an important factor in this filming stage and something that we had to keep up even when we came across problems like trying to get the shot right and who would film that particular shot, we also had to decide between takes of that shot and there were sometimes difference of opinions but we made it work. some shots that we thought of while making the preliminary video we decided that we liked how effective they were and decided to use some of these in our film opening, shots like the extreme high angles. We also learnt about the things we couldn't do for our film opening like the restrictions on equipment effected which shots we could achieve. Tracking and pan shots were difficult to do smoothly as the tripod and camera we had didn't have the right settings to cope with these types of shots.

Editing:

this was the biggest learning curve for me out of the whole project as I had taken a step back in the post-production stage in the preliminary task. When we edited i learned about all of the programs I had to use to put all the footage into a finished film opening and even though it took me a while to learn it I managed to contribute to edit the final piece. Time management was a major factor to the editing stage as we had to work to a deadline and we were all still learning about the programs while trying to complete the task in time. We did overcome this issue through the sharing of knowledge about the programs and researching what we didn't know. Including conventions of a horror film was also something that we had to do in the editing stage as well as the planning stage because we had filmed in bright light but we needed dark scenes for the shots to fit in with the genre so that was another tool we had to work out. I also learnt that we had to accept our target audiences criticism in order to complete a film that would be watched by members of our target audience. 

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

Question 6

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5) How did you attract/address your audience?

Question 5

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4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

 Knowing what your target audience is a very important stage when making any media product. A target audience means a group of people that you aim your product at by what content you use e.g. Females 25+ years old. Establishing your target audience right at the beginning of your planning process means that you can plan what content will appeal to your target audience and also how you or the distribution company will promote your product to that target audience. Some marketing campaigns appeal to younger TA's by using viral marketing such as Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and online applications and competitions.


 We decided that since the genre of the film is horror the age of the primary target audience would be best at 15+ years old as the certificate of horrors tend to be 15 or 18. We settled on 15-24 years olds because the characters in the film would be within that age bracket so the target audience would relate to the characters and therefore may feel the emotions that the characters feel. As for the gender we decided that males would be appropriate to focus on as males are generally more likely to want to go and see a horror film, especially within that age range. The main character was also male so there would be a sense of relation there too. 


 Our secondary target audience would be in the same age range as our primary but instead of males they would be females. This is because some females also like to watch horror films or The men who go to see the film may want to take their girlfriends along to see it as well so we considered them as a secondary target audience so they might want to see it as well.


 This is a profile of a typical member of our primary target audience:

Name: Jason
Age: 18
Gender: Male
Interests: Music, playing guitar, watching films and studying.
Favourite films: Insidious, Saw, Shawshank Redemption, Forrest Gump and The Sixth Sense.
Favourite Genres: Horror and Comedy
About: Jason is a 18 year old student at college. He studies hard but likes to relax in the evenings and watch films. He said he is yet to find a horror film that really scares him.

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

Question 3

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

Emel and Renai

We decided to choose Emel for the role of the victim as she could could act similarly to the way Renai acts in Insidious when she feels alone and trapped in her own house. She also has a similar look to Renai so we knew that this look would work for the opening that we were trying to come up with.

 We wanted to represent a typical woman who is at home doing what any other woman would do like watching TV or reading a book. We also wanted Emel to react to the incident in a way that other people especially women would be able to associate with so that meant that she would act vulnerable and weak against this other dominant figure.

Insidious Trailer:

 

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

Shot 1 - The Thing, 2011

 I chose to look at this film opening because it uses close-ups a lot throughout the sequence. We used this idea of putting in a lot of close-ups so that the sequence feels quite claustrophobic in parts, this is a convention used in horror films particularly and is demonstrated by the opening of The Thing. In this shot there is also credits alongside the close-up of the object to the right. We took this idea and put the close-ups with the credits in the same way, however unlike this opening we had other types of shots without credits in between the credit shots. The dark lighting around the edge of the shot is also something about this opening that we tried to incorporate into some of our shots.

Shot 2,3 and 4 - Blade II, 2002

 This opening sequence is very different to most openings but some of the ways they have put the shots together we used in a similar way. In shot 2, instead of having almost still objects, they have put the credits over the top of the action shot that's in the background. There is a tracking shot of a man walking through a room with a voice over in the background but the focus is on the closest object and the credits. This type of credit shot has been used in other film openings too but we decided to steer away from this method and more towards the one used in shot 1. This opening also cuts to action shots without credits in shot 3, and this is something that we decided to put into our film opening in between the still credit shots. We also made the decision to make the action shots quite quick instead of longer like in Blade II. In shot 4 it shows that the title Blade II is put at the end of the opening sequence, this is quite unconventional for a film opening, but we liked the idea of having the title at the end instead of at the beginning or in the middle of the sequence so we also put our title at the end of the sequence. our title was also set against a dark background, this is very conventional of horror film openings as shown in Blade II.

Shot 5 - Sweeney Todd:The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, 2007

 This shot shows the type of font used in this opening sequence is a plain, serif font as this is very conventional of horror film credits. We also took a serif font as our final choice to apply to the credits in our film opening so that it would follow this convention of horror films.

Shots 6 and 7 - Insidious, 2010

 Shot 6 shows one of the ways that the credits are displayed in this film opening. Each line of text moves in a different direction from the one above and below it (left or right) to make them more interesting to watch, there are also some words that are bigger than others to make them stand out more. We took this idea from this sequence and applied it to the credits in our opening as we thought it was a good way of making them more interesting to watch than still text and we made some of the words bigger that we wanted to stand out. In shot 7 it shows a scene inside a house in black and white with the credits in red put in the darker areas of the shot. We developed this idea by having the credits in the almost still scenes, with the camera moving around the scene slightly, like in this opening but we kept those in colour and applied black and white to the action shots to create the sense of a flashback. So we took the conventions of a horror opening from Insidious and changed the effects around slightly to give an unique film opening.

Shots 8 and 9 - Dawn of the Dead, 2004

 Dawn of the Dead opening sequence consists of cutting quickly between action shots and still credit shots. The order this openings action shots have been placed in makes it seem more like a trailer so to avoid this we did the similar thing of swapping between action and credit shots but the action shots were in order so that they showed part of a story that was going to lead onto the rest of the film. We also developed the credit shots so that the image in the background was part of the story line too.