Evaluation Activity 4- Who would be the audience for your media product?

Q. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our film opening can be defined within the sub-genre of Psychological horror (which is sometimes also known as Psychological Thriller).

Before I could answer this question, I did some brief research in to the target audience for psychological Horror films.
http://www.slideshare.net/CharlotteEmmaVicki/target-audience-of-thrillers
http://billiepearsonportfolio.weebly.com/target-audience.html
https://prezi.com/jzs6b3a9ykxn/target-audience-thriller-films/
http://britasthrillerhannah.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/thriller-audiencesg.html
http://nfgssupernova.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/target-audience-of-psychological.html

Finding out the below information:

From this research, we noticed that, the audience of this type of film differs from the stereotypical audience of Horror films in general (usually Teenage/young adult males), as we found that the normal audience for Psychological Horror films are young females (often aged 18+). As the research suggests this may be because younger audiences would find the contents of most psychological Horror’s either to intellectually challenging or too frightening, being further supported by the fact that most Psychological Horror films are rated 18 anyway. Although the age bracket for audiences of this type of film is quite clear to define, it is harder to assign a particular gender as being the targeted audience of Psychological Horror films. However, research seems to indicate that Psychological Horror films are more often than not directed at a female audience, who, stereotypically are drawn more toward the emotional side of these films.

From our research we also learnt that the type of people who watch Psychological Horror films are likely to be creative, as the ideas they present to an audience are usually quite abstract. Similarly, it seems that to fully understand and appreciate Psychological Horror films, you must be relatively intelligent and of a curious nature. However there is no fixed or typical social class that can be associated with fans of this type of film with both the rich and poor engaging in Psychological horror films; although it may be said that such films are better suited to those of the middle and upper as one would associate a lack of education, and thus understanding of these films with a lower class audience.

Below is a drawing of what we would imagine a member of our Target Audience looks like. She is annotated with some key facts.

Why would our Target Group Member watch our film?
Our film is likely to be an independent film, the creative nature of the above target group member, and her interest in the indie and alternative genres of film, would mean that she would probably find our film appealing because of this. The fact she is a Graphic Art student is a testament to her creativity, with her hobbies also being creative too. Her creative nature would mean that she would have an open mind, being likely to be intrigued by our unusual plot line, whilst still being willing to go along with and engage in some of the more abstract aspects of our film, such as the fact that one of our protagonists is a talking bear. Her status as a middle class, female student make her a stereotypical target for our film, and someone who is likely to visit the cinema often to watch films (as a student her budget would be quite tight, and visiting the cinema is not too expensive, thus being something she would be likely to do).The fact that our protagonist is also a female, may mean that this particular person would be more likely to watch our film as they may feel like they can relate to her, being also female. However, our target member is significantly older than ‘Sasha’, but given her intellect (which is implied in the fact she is a university student), she is still likely to be able to engage with and attempt to understand the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings.

How other Films appealed to a Target Audience similar to ours
Black Swan- This is a Psychological film, with a target audience that would be similar to our own (as we have discovered from the research of others such as: http://nfgstsunami.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/audience-research-black-swan.html). The main target audience for this film would be Females aged between 15-29. Fox Searchlight who produced this film, attempted to appeal to this target audience of this film by…

• Creation of film posters
• The nature of the Film’s content- This film was about Ballerina’s making it more likely to appeal to females than males
• Creation and distribution of film trailers
• Making the age rating of their film a ’15’- which was the minimum age of their target audience

Knowing how the audience of Black Swan was appealed to, we have considered some ways we might make our film appeal to a similar audience. We could entice them firstly, by creating a trailer which highlights the best and most intriguing parts of our film. This trailer, like the Black Swan Trailer would be shown on several different platforms. We might also do as the creators of this film did and show our film at several film festivals, specifically at the BFI London Film Festival. This is a festival which our target member would probably attend, as the main attendee’s to these type of festivals tend to be students. Given the fact that our specific target member is a Graphic designer, it is likely she would also be intrigued by a well designed film poster; one which is eye catching and unique like the Black Swan Poster.

Feedback from Our Target Audience on the film opening:
One member of our target Audience was Megan’s sister, Hannah who is soon to be 15, she is much like the target member we have shown above as she is highly creative, a fan of indie and Alternative music and also Psychological Horror Films. She said that our film opening was “Intriguing, using a variety of creative camera angles. Its creative nature was interesting and appealed to me because I’m really interested in art”, but she also said “However, I think that the lighting you used could have been a little darker, especially in the bit where the ‘mother character’ was walking up the stairs, as Psychological films often have really dark lighting to create suspense. Particularly in films like ‘The Shining’, which is one of my Favourite films.”

Given this feedback, we can see that in order to appeal to members of our target group, such as Megan’s sister, it is paramount that the final quality of our film is excellent. It is also of equal importance that it adheres to our chosen Genre as much as possible, because this will be the main thing which will attract our audience members to our film. This makes sense given that fans of Psychological Horror films will naturally most want to see a Psychological Horror film which wholly conforms to this genre. We would also need to collate more feedback from our Target Audience to move further on from here, and try to appeal to our Target Audience in as many ways as possible.

Evaluation Task 2- How does your Media Product represent particular social groups?

Our protagonist, Sasha, is similar to the character of Dalton in ‘Insidious’. Both films fall into the genre ‘psychological horror’ as both of these characters battle with mental conditions although Sasha’s is an actual medical condition whereas Dalton’s is made up for the purposes of the film. Additionally, the characters are of a similar age.

Evaluation Task 3- What kind of Media Institution might distribute your media product and why?

Evaluation Activity 6- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Evaluation task 1- In What ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

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

Evaluation Task 7- What have you learnt in progression from Preliminary tasks to Final Product?

“Just Do it!”- First Preliminary Task
This was the name given to the first practical task our media class was assigned. For this we were placed in to groups and given digital video camera’s, being asked to come up with a story which involved the phrase “Just Do it!”. For many of us it was our first chance to film, using a variety of shots and edit them together on Adobe Premier Pro. Below is the video which shows this preliminary task.

This is one of a few close ups in this preliminary video. Since filming this, we learnt how important it was to use a variety of shots in our final piece, in order to make it consistently interesting and engaging for our audience. Close-ups like this one are used more frequently in our final piece as they help to highlight key props, character emotions or actions.

This is a screenshot of a mid shot, used in our preliminary task. Although this shot is good in that it helps to develop the narrative and varies from other shots used in the clip, the mise en scene here is limited (though relevant to the clip storyline). When it came to filming our final cut, we used a much greater variation of props and costume than what is exhibited here. The variation of props that we ended up using, made our clip more like the opening to a real film and helped it to conform to the genre we were trying to portray. For example, the fact that we used the Red Jam prop, fitted in well with our genre as the colour red is often used in horror films, and the spreading of the Jam with a knife had a foreboding effect, hinting to events later on in our clip when ‘Sasha’ would perhaps decapitate the bear producing blood, which the red Jam hinted to. Although this decapitiation is not seen, the use of the Jam and Knife props in combination allude to it, and this allusion helps the clip conform to our chosen genre.

This is an example of a notification which came up whilst viewing the Preliminary task we did. It acts almost as a testament to the quality of earlier work, this video was extremely shaky, and in most cases this detracted from its overall quality as it distracted viewers of the clip greatly. By the time it came to filming our Final Cut, we had learnt that the best way to ensure shots were steady was to use a tripod. However for all shots, this isn’t possible, and so as time went on we became better aquainted with the media we were using and when filming our hands became more steady. Of course, we also recognised that for particuarly shaky shots a stabliser, such as the one Youtube offers here (you can also get them in the editing software we used-Adobe Premier Pro) was a good way to ensure the steadiness of our shots. Generally unsteady shots are only used in our later work to create an effect, contributary to their genre, rather than as an example of bad Camera work.

This title is small and does not remain on the screen for a long enough amount of time for it to be noticed and acknowledged by Viewers. Equally, it is squashed and due to this somewhat harder to read. In our Final task we found deciding which titles to use and what sized they should be/ where they should be placed particularly hard. To solve this issue we watched several pieces of work from other students; some of which can be seen below (under the heading, ‘Other Student Work’), before creating our own titles. Since this task we have come to recognise the importance of making titles clear and readable.

Although this clip uses continuity editing, the editing in our final piece has a better flow to it and is more consistent, as we have learnt to make cuts shorter and more precisely timed. This extends to our match on actions, which had to be expertly timed in order to look realistic and improve the quality of our opening. Furthermore than this , we introduced a technique that this clip lacks; parallel editing. This was used to develop the two separate narrative’s we had within our piece of the girl setting up her tea party and her mother coming up the stairs to check on her. This is an improvement to techniques used in this video, as use of Parallel editing helps to make the storyline more complex, giving it depth and building up even more tension surrounding the actions of the protagonist. This tension which is built up via parallel editing, is something all horror films try to develop, thus helping our work conform to the conventions of our chosen film genre.

Other Student Work- We looked at a range of other student film openings (paying particular attention to it, if it was of the same or similar genre of our piece) to help us to try and decipher where our titles should be placed and what they should look like. Examples of what we looked at can be seen below:

Test Anxiety- Second Preliminary Task
In our second Preliminary task, we got in to different groups to begin to film and edit another clip. This time the subject we were given was ‘Test Anxiety’ and we were asked to first create a storyboard and then film our piece. At this time we had our own individual blogs, on which we had to log our progress and show evidence of the work we are doing, links to Megan’s can be seen below.

https://megansmediaworld.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/story-boarding-scripting/

https://megansmediaworld.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/storyboarding-and-scripting/

This shot in particular demonstrated the need for us to make our titles clear, placing them over a simplistic background, which would not distract from their content. Although the background of this shot is not entirely simplistic, the title placement here is a clear improvement from our “Just Do it” video, showing some progression in our editing techniques. Since this, we have continued to learn and research the importance of titles, considering their placement, colour, duration and size even more carefully in our final piece.

This image is incredibly blurred. When working with Media equipment more, we learnt to reduce blurring by ensuring that the work we shot was in focus. This was done using the focus ring at the front of the Camera lens, just before the zoom dial, which would be twisted whilst the camera was in a fixed position, until the shot we took was in focus. Although sometimes the lack of focus can give an interesting dimension to a shot, in the example above, the blurriness of this frame was not deliberate and thus a clear improvement in terms of focusing can be noticed from when this shot was taken to when we completed our final cut.

Other things we have Learnt from our Preliminary Tasks:

We have learnt how to frame our shots in a much better way, adhering to the rule of thirds in order not to alienate our audience and make our clip appear as realistic as possible. Similarly there has been a greater focus on Camera Angles in our later work. We realised that these are key to the narrative often showing the different levels of power that characters have in a film. In our preliminary tasks, there are little or no varying levels in camera shots to show power levels, however in our opening there are a few of these shots. Particularly there is a low angle shot of the character ‘Sasha’, which depicts her as dominant and domineering. This is  a shot which is much like the shot below from the horror fIlm ‘Carrie’.

There is also a considerable difference between the use of sound in the three clips I have mentioned here; for instance, the first preliminary task we did had no sound at all, minus the digetic sound we got when we first filmed this piece. The second task progressed a little from this, having a song playing in the background to contribute to the atmosphere of the piece. But neither of these pieces had any attention paid to the sound levels within them as our final cut did. Improvement can be seen across the 3 videos, as we progressed from having a limited selection of sound to having a diverse range of digetic and non-digetic sounds placed at different volumes throughout our clip. Our preliminary tasks taught us the importance of sound, showing how it can contribute to a film, creating an atmosphere and helping our film conform to the horror genre

FINAL CUT

This is the final cut for our AS Media coursework. Since the last final cut we produced, certain small changes have been made to our film opening, as can be seen here. This is the final version of our work.

Final Cut

Fixing the Camera

This was the first Email we received from our Media teacher to help fix the Camera.

Taking on board the advice presented above, I googled “how to change the white balance on a Canon SLR Camera”, finding several Youtube videos which helped me immensely. In the end I had to change both the White balance of the Camera as well as the exposure.

I used these Videos to help me:

Once the exposure and white balance of the Camera we had looked fine, I proceeded to shoot the parallel editing shots of my Mum.

Filming Our Final Cut

After receiving the feedback from our rough cut, we thought it would be a good idea to begin planning for our final cut straight away. This is something which would be filmed in our Easter Break, meaning that much of what we had to organise would be done via text. Below can be seen a few screenshots of the text messages sent between us.

The conclusions of our communications meant that on Monday I went I to school to pick up a SLR Camera for myself and Esther to film with, alongside a tripod and camera charger in case the camera died during our shooting. I then went home and began to prepare the setting for our filming and organise the props, before meeting Esther, Willow and Harry (who was accompanying Willow) later on in the evening. The images below, show the varying steps I took to set up for our final cut alongside some images of the props we used.

Whilst preparing for filming, I had a checklist with me which I used to ensure that I had the right props with me and that we would be ready to film as soon as Willow, Harry and Esther came to my house. To ensure Willow would be ready for her role as the protagonist in our opening, we texted Harry to check that she had a change of clothes suitable for the role with her.

When everyone arrived, filming took approximately 4 hours, as we decided to re-shoot the entirety of our piece, adding in a few extra shots to our shooting script. The reason filming took so long was because the camera we had ran out of battery half way through filming, and thus we had to wait for it to recharge before we could continue filming once more. While filming, we got Harry to take a few photos on my phone of the process.

After filming, we began to plan when to come in and edit our video, choosing Thursday as the best time. On this day we decided we would come in to school to start the editing process and also to rerecord the voice of the bear.