Evaluation

Preparation for evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
• Main characters are male.
• Ordinary people drawn into danger by accident.
• Identity of killer is known.
• [Violent confrontations].
• Set in exotic settings.
• Heroes are accustomed to danger.
• Retardation (concealment of identity).
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
• The main social group is teenage boys aged 17/18.
• Boy racers.
• Care-free.
• The other social group is adults aged between 25 – 28.
• Emotional.
• Car.
• Costumes.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
• Sony/20th Century Fox → reach a big audience.
• Certificate 15 (relates to what would happen in the rest of the film).
• DVD.
• Sky Box Office.
• Mainstream TV launch.
• Where to advertise.
• ‘Above the line’ advertising → trailers, posters, full page adverts in magazines & billboards.
• ‘Below the line’ → interview with cast member.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
• 16 -29.
• Demographic groups.
• Lifestyle.
• Already detailed on blog.
How did you attract/address your audience?
• Ages of the characters.
• Gender of the main characters.
• Sub-genre.
• Questionnaire.
• Showing film.
• Adjusting the film.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
• iDVD.
• Garageband.
• DV camera.
• Blogger.
• iMovie.
• Internet research.
• You can fit quite a lot into 2 minutes but not always as much as you would like to.
• Connecting camera to iMovie.
• Blog - embedding clips from YouTube.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
• The bigger the cast the more difficult it is to organise a day when you can get everyone together.
• Moving shots are very difficult to film with a hand-held camera if you want them to be steady.
• Filming outside is quite temperamental with the weather.
• The bigger the cast is, the more out-takes you end up with, the funnier the filming is & the harder it is to control the cast.

Thriller - Goodbye...

iDVD

I have used iDVD once before but I have only ever put 1 video onto disc whereas this time I wanted to put 3 videos on DVD so I had to find out how to add more videos.
I found this out by playing around with the iDVD software and seeing what I was able to do with it. It was quite easy to work out how to add in the extra videos but I did find 1 problem with it. On the main menu there was a 'drop zone' which I was able to put a picture into so I decided to try and add in a screen shot from the film. I wasn't able to take a screen shot using a mac computer but in iMovie I did find out how to take a still shot. Once I'd done this I then wasn't able to transfer this shot into iDVD to add to the 'drop zone'. In the end I left this space empty.

I decided to put my Preliminary task, my Thriller film and the Out-takes that I'd created from both films onto a disc to create a Year 12 Show-reel of all the films I have created whilst being in year 12. I created this show-reel before I've done my evaluation as that is not something that I would show to an audience like I would with the other 3 films.

Feedback on the film during production

I showed this version of the film to some of the cast and friends and asked them to tell me what they liked so far and what they thought I could do to improve it.

What they liked so far:
• Like the music, it's good.
• Good casting.
• Like the credits over the shots.
• Like the tap turning on to cut out the music.
• The inside shots are really good.
• Like the ending, really good (the tree piece).
• Like the flashbacks.
What they thought I could do to improve it:
• The sound levels need altering.
• The flashbacks need to be more prominent.
• Put the sped-up shots back to normal speed.
• Take out the 1st sped-up shot.
• Put the title over the end shot.
• Take out some of the walking shots.
• Modify the music over the end piece.
• Same amount of music to silence on the walking shots.
• Put the boy's 1st 2 paces on the pavement into slow motion.

After acting on a lot of the feedback that I got from my target audience, this is the end result of changing the film to suit what my audience thought I could do to improve the film.

Music

For my soundtrack I have created 2 pieces of music, 1 for the flashbacks and 1 for when the man is following the boys down the road. I created both pieces of music using Garageband.
For the flashback piece, I used a solo piano at the start and then I had a guitar overlapping it a few seconds into the film. I did this because the piano at the start is over the man and the woman standing together hand-in-hand and the guitar comes in when she steps out into the road and the car appears. The addition of the second instrument creates tension amongst the audience and signals to them that something is about to happen. I used this piece for the second flashback as well so that it is clear to the audience that it is also a flashback.
For the second piece of music I used 2 different stringed instruments. This piece is only used for the man following the boys so when the camera cuts from in-front to behind, it goes from the boys talking with no non-diegetic music to non-diegetic music. This builds up the tension of the scene and gives a pace to the film. Also, it emphasises that the boys aren't aware of the fact that they are being followed, therefore increasing tension amongst the audience as they know that something is about to happen which the boys aren't aware of.