Evaluation

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

I think that our media product had a healthy mixture of following and challenging conventions of the media genre. For example, when designing our titles, we decided to use an effect on LiveType called: ‘fridged.’ This effect made the titles shake from side to side. We thought that this was common in this genre. It almost gave the effect of a crazy person and created an uneasy tense atmosphere. Again, the titles were blue and we thought that this challenged the genre. Instead of having a conventional red or white colour, we decided that blue could represent fear and cold. Again, the beginning shot has a blue tint that adds to the idea of feeling numb and dulled, this is juxtaposition to the fast, rock music we added over it. Again, this is another convention we didn’t follow, instead of the creepy, slow music usually used in thriller openings, we decided to use a fast soundtrack to keep the audience on edge. Although it didn’t completely follow conventions of the genre, I think that all the factors worked well together to create a tense atmosphere.

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

I think that new line cinema would distribute our film seeing as the also distributed the film se7en. New line cinema also merged with Warner Brothers who would help promote our film. This would help our thriller to get more publicity and is more likely to be successful seeing as Warner Brothers is a large, well known company worldwide.

•Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for our media product are teenagers. We chose this target for a number of reasons. A recent study showed that most thriller audiences are aged 12-18. Taking in to account this information, we decided to aim our film at teenagers. Once we had decided this we decided that a good location would be a school. With teenagers as the main characters and a classroom as our main setting, we felt that this made the film more relatable, resulting in it being scarier as it was more realistic.

•How did you attract/address your audience?

As I said before, setting our story in a school played a large role in attracting our audience. If our aim of the film was to scare children, setting it in a school with children made the story far more realistic. When researching films, we found that the scariest films generally were more realistic. For example, Ils, (Them) is about a French couple that live in the countryside that get terrorised by a group of French orphans. If a Japanese person were to watch it, I expect it would be far less scary then to a French couple living in the countryside. To the French people, it would be more realistic creating a more tense and fearful atmosphere. This is the effect we tried to create for teenagers.

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

I think that I have learned a lot about the process of constructing this product. I think that the area my knowledge has most improved on is creating titles. Before this project I had no idea how to construct a title or where to do it. For me it was an exiting experience to gain this skill. Jamie and me worked together to produce the titles on LiveType. It was interesting to use a program that allowed you to be so free with what you chose to do. I also think that my use of technology that I had already used helped me to strengthen my skills.