Evaluation

1. Evaluation By Emma Holness

2. Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Our opening sequence comes under the genre of Thriller. It is inspired by the film ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle’. It is about a psychotic mother grieving the loss of her child and attempts to steal another woman’s family. It has a similar target audience and narrative structure to our film. • Our sequence incorporates generic conventions of a Psychological Thriller such as: • Themes: The themes of our thriller are: Psychology of the mind, Obsession and Disturbance. These are typical themes of a psychological thriller. • Narrative Structure: We include twists in our thriller as this is a common feature in a thriller. For example: Our main character kidnaps her own child without realizing and this is revealed at the end. • Characters: Our main character is an obsessive perfectionist and this is shown through her appearance and background. Our main character is a mid-aged woman from upper class socialization. She was happily married with a child of 2 but then things suddenly went wrong. Her child was kidnapped and her husband left her after she had turned insane over grieving the loss of her only child. 2 years on she had started to finally settle down but the discovery of her child’s dead body pushes her over the edge. She then kidnaps children, hoping that they will fill the emptiness she feels after the loss of her son.

3. Mise-en-scene: Our opening sequence has two locations where it was filmed, a park and a large house. • Our main character is dressed in a white shirt, a knee length grey pencil skirt, black tights and plain black court shoes. These smart clothes connote her aristocratic personality. We also added plastic cleaning gloves to her costume to signify the personality of our character (an obsessive perfectionist). • We used props to symbolise her personality such as Hand Sanitizer. We used this in our opening sequence to show the audience her personality. Putting Baby Photos, Baby Grows, Park Equipment/ Toys, Abandoned Children’s Clothing (a child’s hat in the park) all gives out that our opening sequence is about a baby. But not actually showing a live baby, only empty park equipment and old photos, makes the audience question what has happened or where is her baby. • She has stiff and slow figure expression, and makes sure everything she does is in order and precise. Her facial expressions throughout the sequence are serious and mono-toned. She also has staring eyed which hardly blink throughout which indicates her unstable state of mind. • In the editing suite, we dimmed the lighting and grey washed our footage to desaturate the colours and add an eerie, dark tone to our sequence.

4. Soundtrack: We added non-digetic sounds throughout the sequence, which adds to our sequences mood. We firstly added music to create a tense atmosphere. The piece slowly builds from a quiet start to a dramatic ending. This creates tension in the audience which also slowly builds and climax’s the feeling at the end. Secondly, we added sound effects, such as: baby cries and children playing sounds, which create a really tense atmosphere. • Cinematography: Our group used a variety of shots in our opening sequence. But mostly the ‘close up’ shot. We did this to create an unsettling feel in the atmosphere, they also help to show our charters state of mind. • Editing: We decided to add extra footage into our time line on the third lesson as we felt the shots would flow together better if we put extra clips between our original footage, it would also develop our sequences narrative. Having this extra footage gave us the opportunity to remove pieces of film we didn’t like and replace it with new footage. This improved our general sequence. We edited our sequence in a repetitive structure; it has similar shots through out, such as a mid shot/ close up of empty playground equipment, our main character preparing clothes for her babies, baby photos and then our main character again. This gives the sequence a visual rhythm and makes it flow better.

5. Our sequence has a few generic conventions featured. Firstly, the music we have chosen to use, builds up creating tension. Secondly, when viewing the sequence, you have a sense of the plot but yet it still retains mystery. The mystery with in our story keeps the audience engaged and determined to uncover the unknown within the story. Our location is isolated from society as it is with in her home. Also we use props to contribute to the narrative. Lastly, using props (hand sanitizer and cleaning gloves) connotes her unstable mental state which reveals our films genre (psychological thriller). This also gives a sense of character.

6. Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups? Characters: Our film has a small amount of characters as it isn't only based around one main woman. She turns into a crazy psychopath when the police reveals that her kidnapped babies body has been found dead, leading her to steal other peoples babies in the hope to fill the emptiness she feels after her babies death. The protagonist , the police, constantly chase and try to uncover the truth. The Villain- Our film is mainly based around this character. She is a middle aged woman (aged 28-30) from an middleclass social classed background. She has no professions and her nationality is Mixed race American. She is not stereo typed in our sequence but we use certain props to connote her personality (hand sanitizer and marigold cleaning gloves).  She is a typical villain as she is familiar with violence , obsession and death but on the surface to society she seems a normal person, however in the privacy of her home she shows her true state of mind and obsession with anything that is linked to her babies death.

7. The villain of the story appears to be compulsive through the props used and her costume. In our sequence we used baby photos of her child (Blake) to make her feel connected to everything that she has lost. Using uniformed baby grows connotes a perfectionist personality. She also does this as she wasnts to mould them into something she can control from a young age. During the opening sequence the camera flick back to shots of empty playground equipment, which is a common location for thrillers as it is isolated and secluded away from society. This also reflects the feelings of emptiness and degrade of human existence the mother is feeling. Our location is a large house which has a basement as well as 5 floors. We chose this setting as it represents the social class of our character (mid/ upper class). The appliances featured in our scenes also reflect the wealth and personality of our character, For example: Washing Machine, Dishwasher. Our main character is dressed in professional clothing showing her proficient state.

8. Q3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? We have aimed our film at the Mainstream audience. I think that Hollywood Pictures will be a suitable company for our film to be released by as it is owned by Walt Disney which is part of the conglomerate media. So our film would be advertised on many different media sources, such as Television, Radio, Trailers in the cinema, the internet and many others. I think that Hollywood Pictures would be interested in releasing my film as they have produced similar films to mine, such as ‘The Hand That Rocks The Cradle’. Both films feature similar themes , they both deal with Obsession, a psychotic mother grieving the loss of her child, target audience and narrative structure. This film made $148,469,791 in box office and I would hope to make this amount with our film. I think our film would be shown in a full screen cinema to feel the full effect of the suspense.

9. Q4: Who would be the audience for your media product? • On the internet, i researched past Thriller films, similar to ours to gain an idea of what the certificate should be for our film. I looked at: The hand that rocks the cradle (15), Anti-Christ (18), Decieved (15), Mother (15) and Birth (15). From this research I gathered a suitable certificate for my film would ‘15’. There isn’t any use of graphic violence or strong language so there is no need for it to be an 18. It also couldn't be a certificate 12 because the film would be too complicated for a child to process and they could find the themes disturbing. The core audience for our film is you appeals to is young to middle aged women as it is mainly about a mother and her child. The themes featured in our film links to our target audience as they can relate to the strong bond between a mother and her child. Our film would also appeal to mothers as the film is mailnly set around a mum and shows her horrific story. I think our film would be a low budget film as it doesn't include and expensive features, such as special effects or 3D viewing. Our psychological thriller would not produce any merchandise and it being released as it is unsuitable for the film genre and story. Our main villain would be played by a actress who is the same age as the niche audience of fans as the audience would relate to her age, previous films and continue to view her new releases. This would expand the size of our audience as it draws a different age in.

10. Q5. How did you attract your audience? • We attracted our audience of young/ middle aged woman by featuring the a mid aged mother as our main character in our film. She is part of the age range for our target audience. I think the footage in our opening sequence is quite dramatic and mysterious. This will leave the viewers slightly confused and curious, with questions in their minds. Such as: Who is she? Where is her baby? Is the baby in the photos alive? Also not actually using a real baby in our opening sequence will leave the thought of whether this baby is alive or dead, and if it is actually hers, leaving them itching to find out. • If our film was distributed we would use advertisement methods which would appeal to women through the Press. We would use general advertisement items such as Leaflets, Posters, Trailers and newspapers ect... • Older Audience: We want to advertise this film to our target audience so we will feature our product in: Shopping centres on posters, Magazines (More, Vogue and Company), or on Social Networking Sites (for example Facebook or MySpace). All these advertisement strategies would appeal to our target audience, which is young to middle aged women. • Younger Audience: Advertising on Social Networking would be a main idea. This viral Advertising strategy would get young people talking and emailing i to each other, which spreads the word about our film.

11. Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing your product? • Throughout the preliminary exercise, I learnt how to use the equipment correctly. Before the prelim I had no idea how to use a camera or how to edit our final footage. It was difficult remembering how to change some settings on the camera; such as creating depth of field with the lens, changing the colour of the screen and adjusting the white balance. Our tutor told us the basic things to remember like; making sure the cameras battery is full, over shooting so we wouldn't run out of footage while editing and to re-shoot clips that do not work. • After shooting we moved into the editing suite where I was completely clueless to what I was doing. As the lesson continued, my knowledge progressed and by the end of the session i knew how to; batch capture, put into a timeline, and add effects to clips, such as how to put it into black and white, and also how to add music. • techniques like start 10 seconds before shooting and 360 rule. • How to use Adobe Premier 7 Editing.

12. Q7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? • In the preliminary exercise, I learnt how to use a variety of elements which i used in my Opening Sequence. I found that carrying out the research and the planning stages were really important as it organized the later points. I focused on this more in my sequence and I found it much easier to carry out the filming and editing. • Secondly i learnt how to handle the equipment and learnt many editing techniques and what effect they have. I used some of these editing techniques in my Opening Sequence, such as colour saturation, and slow motion. I learnt that these two effects are commonly used in thrillers so we included it in our sequence. it also gave an eerie effect and set the atmosphere to our sequence. • Thirdly, while in the editing suite, i learnt how to use the editing programme more intently. I learnt how to fade in effect and fade them out. How to use slow motion and colour saturation and many more techniques. • I really liked working as a team. We all divided our work equally however, due some absences, I took up the role of there task until they returned. • Overall, I think this production was a success however if i did this again i would ensure our group was more prepared. E.g Filming Equipment, Props, Settings Needed and making sure that the production went smoother.