Evalutation For Movie Opening (Dear Diary) - Question 7

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

Throughout the entirety of this process, I feel my skills in abilities surrounding the subject have developed and enhanced massively. I came into the subject at the beginning of Year 12 not knowing anything about cameras, filming, editing or blog writing. I think now I can safely say I can do all of those things now with a partner sat next to me or even on my own.

Firstly, regarding filming, in our preliminary task I had very little knowledge of the functions of a DSLR camera. What we produced as a result of the preliminary task reflected a case of experimenting and trial and error. However, after watching videos, asking friends, being taught and experimenting I have learnt a lot. For example, I have discovered different shots and angles you can use while filming to achieve different affects such as; high angle shots, low angle shots, tracking shots, pan, point of view shot, establishing shot and many more. All these things I have tried and used and many we incorporated into our movie opening. Furthermore, I have learnt about the different settings available to use on the camera when filming certain shots in certain locations. You can adjust the settings so the exposure isn't to dim or bright, you can change the speed the shutter captures the shot the grasp detailed pictures and video clips. Again this is something I was unsure of when filming the preliminary task but now I have tried and applied to the movie opening project.

Secondly, the editing process, you can see from our preliminary task we just simply uploaded clips put them in order and submitted it to our teacher. However, after experimenting on Adobe Premiere and watching many videos on how to achieve different affects I feel this is one of the areas I have grown the most in my skills and abilities. I now can change the brightness and colour, add music, remove sounds, add different transitions, add text and tiles, overlap clips and sound and change the volume of sound on individual clips. All of these techniques we used whilst editing our main task and I believe it certainly showed our progress in our abilities.

Finally, writing blog posts, although it seems like an easy task I have actually learnt several new skills. I have learnt how to create and embed GIFs, how to embed YouTube videos, how to change the order of publication of each post and how to lay out posts so they look symmetrical and organised. Throughout the entire process of writing my blog posts, from the very first one I wrote until the one I am writing now I have learnt a few little tips and tricks that helped me achieve a better finish on my blog and allowed me to achieve as much detail as possible.

Evalutation For Movie Opening (Dear Diary) - Question 6

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

I chose to present this in a PowerPoint format:

Evaluation For Movie Opening (Dear Diary) - Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

Conventions:	Tally:
Low key lighting	II                                                                                 2
Faded cuts	0
Eerie music	III                                                                                4
Dark colour pallet	I                                                                                  1
Mysterious characters	IIIII                                                                              5
Relatable/realistic protagonists	IIII                                                                               4
Unexpected twists	0
Different locations	II                                                                                 2

Whilst asking people for there opinion on these conventions we noted some important quotes and phrases they said they look for in thriller movies also.

1. A sense of mystery from the beginning.
2. Lighting, sound and music that reflect the action and sinister nature of the film.
3. A film that both subverts and conforms to conventions of thrillers as it makes it interesting but traditional.

I used this table to see what conventions of thriller movies audiences felt were vital to include in a movie opening. It is clear that; realistic protagonists, mysterious characters and eerie music were 3 key things that audiences look for in thriller movies. Therefore we felt that those were the 3 most important things to include in our opening. We did end up including those 3 conventions along with different locations and low key lighting which some people also found important. By having a main protagonist in the age range of who the film is aimed at 15-21 it makes the movie more relatable and would most probably do better in box office sales as people can relate to that character more.

Overall, it is clear from our final product that many of the conventions listed in this table we included and focused heavily on the 3 most popular ones as we believed they were the most important and they were what people in our chosen audience would like.

Evaluation For Movie Opening (Dear Diary) - Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

We decided to give our movie opening a certification age rating of 15 as we wanted to be able to have more leeway with what topics and scenes we could include. This way it was possible for us to use common thriller attributes in our movie opening.

A 15 movie may include:

• Discrimination
• Drugs
• Strong language
• Nudity
• Sex
• Threat
• Violence

Prior to our decision of making our movie opening a 15 we carried out a basic questionnaire to see the age ranges and genders of people who would be more likely to watch a thriller. These were the results.

Yes	Sometimes	No
17 (M) 18 (M) 16 (F) 52 (M) 13 (M) 19 (M)	17 (F) 43 (F) 24 (M) 15 (M)	16 (F) 17 (M) 12 (F) 23 (F)

From these results I concluded mostly male audience would be interest in a movie that comes under the thriller genre. This could be due to the more violent scenes which are stereotypically more preferred by male audiences. Despite this there were a few women 
who would watch a thriller so by making the main protagonist a female adds a sense of relatability for them if they don't enjoy the more violent scenes.

We decided to make our age bracket 15-21 this isn't saying that people of an older age wouldn't watch our movie as from our result people in there 40's and 50's said they would enjoy watching it. But our age bracket is based on a majority number, we chose to have the minimum age of 15 due to the topics included but also the maturity of the audience, we wanted them to take matters seriously while watching the opening. By focusing on one specific age group it allowed us to tailor our movie and make it relatable and interesting for them.

Also, we felt that this age range would be more likely to go to the cinema and watch the movie therefore bosting box office ticket sales. This is proven in the BFI Statistical Yearbook, in 2015 nearly 30% of people attending the cinema were ages between 15-24.

Evaluation For Movie Opening (Dear Diary) - Question 3

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

Due to the small budget for the research, production and distribution of our movie opening we would need to potentially release our movie independently as appose with it being with a well known corporate brand. Websites such as Amazon Prime and Nextflix both facilitate this option, Netflix is popular among young people which is perfect due to our target audience being between the ages of 15 - 21. Both websites run on a monthly subscription basis and they promote both independent and well known movies and TV shows. Recently Amazon Prime distributed Manchester by the Sea which was nominated for 6 Academy Awards and won two for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor, additionally it won a Golden Globe for Best Actor also. Due to their huge success with this movie we have decided to use Amazon Prime as our media institution to distribute our movie. Although it isn't as popular as Netflix, it still has a lot of success among our age bracket and has huge success in the film industry. Furthermore, we would hope that if successful our movie would be converted in to DVD format and sold so those who don't have access to Amazon Prime can still watch our movie therefore increasing sales and popularity.

Evaluation For Movie Opening (Dear Diary) - Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our movie opening represents things such as gender, age and class. I chose to present this in mind maps and I will summarize each one down to the key points. All the points I discuss are stereotypes and don't apply to all people in those groups they are just things that from our research and the construction of the movie opening we felt do apply to these topics.

In our movie opening younger people such as Lily are presented to be dependant on someone older than them. This is shown through the phone call Lily makes to her mum telling her way she is and checking in with her. It shows a sense of vulnerability which is why we wanted our female protagonist to be 17 years of age. Their childhood innocence is still prominent yet they can still act and be seen as mature which was the idea we wanted to portray with this character. However, the older man who is very briefly shown in the movie opening is a huge contradiction. He carries himself rather heavily almost insinuating a sense of power and dominance over Lily. This could be due to the stereotypes of the male gender however I believe that his age heavily influences the idea of control he has over people especially Lily.

Evaluation For Movie Opening (Dear Diary) - Question 1

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

• Similarities between our movie opening and the variety of other productions out there include (tense music, jumping straight to the action, flashbacks, sense of the unknown and suspense).
• These similarities allowed us to attract the vast and secure audience that we know already enjoy watching thriller movies that incorporate this themes. Yet it allowed us to branch out and use other ideas such as female protagonists that aren't so common among the thriller genre.
• Another similarity is having the kidnapper as a man, in keeping with the general stereotype that men are more strong, dominant and controlling. We did briefly talk about switching this roles however after doing thorough research we came to the conclusion that it could be to much of a risk. However, our main protagonist is still Lily therefore subverting the stereotype that men are usually the more prominent character. We wanted to show a female who subverted stereotypes in many ways and despite the or deal she goes through remains a strong willed character. Something many women in horror/thriller films lack.
• It develops conventions due to the switching of locations and time periods but also the introduction of a central character through the use of props and location is something that subverts traditional thriller movie plot lines. Additionally, secrecy was used to mask dangerous and sinister character such as the kidnapper which keeps the movie engaging and tense.
• However, it challenges conventional media by using dialogue in the opening sequence, many thriller movies including the one's I have analysed simply use a tense sound score along with creative and intricate camera angels and editing techniques to introduced their film. The limited dialogue we added felt introduced characters well and subverted conventions which made our opening stand out.

Conventions of Thriller -

• Dark colour pallet
• Low key lighting
• Sinister music
• Eerie location
• Mysterious characters
• Fonts that correspond with the genre
• Camera angles that reflect the desired mood

Our production addresses many of these conventions of thriller movies; lighting and sound are both things that we felt were fundamental to keep very similar to that of movies on the market due to there relevance to the genre we have chosen. These conventions allowed us to have a secure audience and also gave us some guidelines when planning and filming our movie opening to make it more realistic and relatable.