My evaluation

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

In our piece I feel that we stuck close to the stock narratives and themes. We did this so that our audience would automatically associate the film with the zombie horror genre. With our characters we decided to have people with specific personality characteristics such as a strong leader, a person obsessed with security, and a religious person. With regard to setting we decided to use run down areas and have it light. We chose light because as our locations were far apart it would take too long to shoot in twilight. I feel that overall we have used and developed the codes and conventions from the films used in our research this helped us to make a good film while not putting off our target audience by challenging the conventions developed for the zombie genre such as ’28 days and 28 weeks later’. We also decided that as in other zombie films we needed to identify when we were in a P.O.V. shot of the zombies we did this by adding a red tint to the shot in the editing. At the end of the piece we decided to use an earthquake effect to make the shaking more unnatural. For our location settings we decided to use some dilapidated areas and some light areas to make it a more believable chace sequence this takes what is done in media films but alters it for our piece. An example of this is in ’28 days later’ when the main character is walking down a dilapidated street. We decided that the costumes for our zombies should be picked by the actors playing them with guidance from the group as we needed old cloths and they had to be things they would normally wear as to make it convincing they had been turned in their own cloths. As for the survivors we picked a specific costume for the characters of Jack and Alice but let the rest do the same as the zombies. This is because we type cast most of our actors and actresses.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our piece we used the group of people who are usually used in zombie films. Mainly the survivalists or zombie fighters we did this so that we could add some fight scenes in the later part of the film. However we did also have a religious person and the maternal woman and teenage daughter this brings a sense of humanity to the zombie fighter group. We decided that each survivor should have a weapon that reflects their personality. For example we gave Alice a large hand gun denoting a sense of power and simplicity, we gave an automatic sub machine gun with laser sight to Egbert to suggest a sense of manic anger and purpose, we didn’t give Joanna or Marie a weapon to suggest they are innocent and don’t want to have a weapon. We provided Jack and Ed with blugening weapons such as a baseball bat and a metal rod. Click here for more info.

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

With our media product we have decided to use small production and distribution companies such as Icon, Film4 and Revolution Studios. We chose these because they are well known companies that also work on independent low budget films. Revolution Studios produced a number of films such as XXX, Hellboy, XXX 2, and Next these films are all action films. Hellboy is a fantasy film about a crime fighting super team. These films are like the type of film we wish to make. Revolution Studios is also well known for serious films and comedies such as Click this shows they deal in a wide range of film genres which could be useful.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our media film is targeted to mainly between 15 and 35 year old people. This is because people younger than 15 years of age may not be allowed to go and see it by their parents and most people of 35 and over don’t go because they have children.

Click here to see our discussion for target audience post.

How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted our audience by starting the film with a chase sequence which draws the audience in and holds their attention this draws the younger viewers in we then learn the characters which helps draw in the older audience. From the feed back we received most of the comments were very positive. Most of our audience liked the track shot and also felt that there were minor faults such as seeing people through fences and a small jump cut. However this feed back is what we wanted to hear. 

What have you learnt about technologies from constructing this product?

I feel that in regard cameras we had a very good camera in the XM1 because it did all the features we wanted like manual focus which we used at the beginning to show Jack out of focus to create a sence of mystery and some confusion. I feel that using natural lighting made the piece look good but it made it harder to keep continuity however we chose this because it would be too hard to move the lighting between our different locations. Also I feel that we should have spent more time on Garageband developing the music as we could have refined it to make it fit the piece perfectly. As with editing I feel that we should have spent more time finishing that so that it flowed perfectly. Also in regard to cameras I feel the camera we had for the steadycam and helmet cam, a sanyo Xacti VPC-C1 Flash digital camera, well as it provided the shots that would have been harder to capture with the XM1.

During the editing we used Imovie ’08 for mac computers we chose this particular package as Christian already owned it on his Macbook and meant that we could edit the piece outside of school. This allowed us to be less restricted by when and where we could do our editing.

During the course of this project we as a group decided to keep in contact via the social network site Facebook and the call software Skype. We did this so that during weekends and holidays we could continue working on our group work even if we weren’t able to meet in person due to trips or illness. Click here to see our post on this.

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

I think that during the time between my preliminary and final pieces I have learnt more about how to use the different pieces of equipment such as cameras and lighting. For example in my preliminary task I didn’t use the XM1‘s manual focus and didn’t know how to use it effectively now I have done this in my final piece I know how and when to use it effectively. I feel that I have also learnt more about how actual films are made which has allowed me to integrate these into my project for example how ‘Looking for Eric’ and ‘Star Trek’ were marketed planned and distributed.

Click here to watch our final piece!