Evaluation - Summary

To conclude looking back at all we have done from the start of our production, we have done so much and come so far from preproduction to the product we created. So what was good about our project? For me starting with research. I think at the beginning research wasn't that good. This is because we had never done any research into this before, well I certainly hadn't anyway so I didn't know how to go about it. That's why my first initial posts are no way near as detailed as my posts towards the end of the production as through it all I have learnt how to fully analyse and evaluate my work looking at what's good and bad about things. But as I researched more I started making more in depth research and looking at the advantages and disadvantages of things. One thing I wish I had done is at the beginning of the project I wish that I had been more motivated to do the work as I didn't put as much effort into the first pieces of research and I feel that maybe if I had researched those better we would have had more to work with. But the fact is I noticed this and improved the quality of my work and therefore improving the quality of the film. But looking back on my research I have improved since I first started which is good as it shows that I can develop my work. But other than that my research was average and it has helped towards creating a really good film. In the production I feel that it went really well. The day of filming went amazing and I really enjoyed that and it was great that we managed to get everything filmed in one day. The fact that we had such a big group of people who were as motivated and as passionate about the film as we were really made it much better and much easier to do things. But it isn't all sunshine and rainbows as there were many problems on the film day. I constantly go on about how we didn't get enough takes of the scene where the zombies break into the room and I think if we would have just got more takes of that the film would have been completely different as there would have been more to work with. But you cant stay hung up on that fact, I know for certain, next time I will allocate much more time for filming and then add extra time just incase anything like that happens. But other than that the filming day was really successful. Another thing about the production was creating the music. One thing that is really original about our film is that for the title sequence and the first scene (even though we left that music out) all the music was composed and recorded by us. Because I can play the piano and I enjoy it I knew straight away that I wanted to create the music for our film. By creating it ourself we put ourself one step ahead because it's original and suited to our film. I love the dark music we have in our film I just wish that maybe the lighting in the mise en scene would have helped contribute to this. The effort we put into the costumes and makeup was really good as well. We had a friend who was very motivated to help us who was really good at makeup so that made it so much easier. We showed her what we wanted and let her work her magic. The mise en scene in terms of makeup would have been terrible if we had done it ourselves as we're all boys who have no experience in this. But other that that costumes were good too. So all in all the production of the film was very successful and I am very happy. Postproduction was also very successful however did take a long time. The editing such as the slow motion is very effective in the scenes it is in. Also the continuity is really good. Another thing that is good is that we managed to rectify the lack of shots we got from the production stage and we added jump cuts so that it works. But other than that everything else is continuous. The process took a while but we have come out with a film that is good, suits our target audience and fits to all our research.

Evaluation - Question 7

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

From the preliminary task I have learnt so much in terms of cinematography. The different shots we did in the real task compared to our preliminary were so different and so vast. Also in editing and sound I now know much more and I can do many different things. But what I have learnt most about is the amount you can do with mise en scene, especially in a genre themed film.

First lets take a look at the brief for the preliminary task:

Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

Here's what we created:


Now lets take a look at the brief for the final product:
Main task: the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

Here's what we created:

For starters, there's so much difference between the two tasks especially in terms of mise en scene and doing the main task allowed us to be a lot more creative and diverse with what to do. but know that we couldn't have done it and made a product this good if we hadn't learnt from the preliminary task. To start with most of our cinematography is similar other than the fact we had moving shots in our 2 minute film. Without first practicing with the preliminary task we wouldn't know how to do the two shot that we did. We used the two shot in our 2 minute film the exact same way in our preliminary task. This is because we learnt from the preliminary task that it is very effective in establishing the characters and the scene for a conversation. We also used the long shots and the close ups in a similar sort of way, this is because they also were very effective in the first preliminary task. But we did use similar ideas. We have improved a lot in the range of shots we use and the diversity of the shots as we have a lot more different types of shot in the main task so we have improved on the cinematography side which is expected as it's a much longer sequence and having the same shots over and over again isn't good. We have improved a lot in editing, in terms of the continuity. Continuity is broke a bit less in our second film which is good however when we have broke continuity it is a bit more noticeable. In our main task we were a lot better at the mise en scene but we have to be as that is the foundation of our film as we chose a zombie horror. 

There may be similarities between the two tasks and differences too but the bottom line is we have learnt so much from the preliminary task and improved so much and we're now not afraid to be more risky with our shots as they often pay off.

Evaluation - Question 6

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

Before we started filming (in preproduction) none of us knew what to expect in terms of technology. This is because none of us had done media studies before therefore had no experience in any form of camera work. The only experience we had was the fact that i'd been on a film set once due to the fact I was helping out a friend and even then I was only a runner therefore had no job that required me to us any form of technology other than a kettle! So in preproduction we only had the guidance of the tutor about some of the technologies to use and other than that it was a use what is available kind of job. But we had no idea what to expect or what to do. However the research part of it we already knew about using modern technologies such as the internet and blogger to research an publish what we researched. But using blogger taught us a lot of how to present our work online and it was very beneficial  In production it was a bit different as we sort of learnt as we went along. For example if a shot didn't look right we'd try again or try something different. But we were in a similar boat to the preproduction as we weren't experienced and didn't know what we were doing. However in postproduction we knew a lot more. Two of the group had previously edited on Final Cut. And I personally had a lot of experience on editing from iMovie to Adobe Premiere so I had an idea about what I was doing. But just because we knew what to do didn't affect the amount of work we did as we all made sure everyone did a bit of editing and camera work to gain experience so next time when we come to make a film we won't be sat here saying that we have no experience as we do have experience. Some of the decisions we did make though that affected the film were having the experienced people do the tricky shots and edits for example the green-screen was done by Darren as he had an idea about what to do and how to go about doing it but other than that we were all kind of in the deep end so we made the decision to all do everything together and equally that way it's fair.

We did everything in preproduction and post production on an Apple iMac. This was good as I have my own Apple Macbook therefore I already was experienced in using a mac so it was easy to research what I needed to and know what ways to navigate around the computer.

When researching for the film we used the internet and we used a mac to search the web and find out what we needed to know. And when presenting our research we used blogger. Personally I had never used blogger before and I found it was a very effective way of presenting my work, this is because blogger allows you to put several different media on it from videos to links to other websites which made everything so much easier to show and explain.





When filming our film we used a Sony Handicam which we had never used before, therefore didn't know what to expect. One thing we did learn from using it is it isn't that good of a quality so next time we would prefer to use a camera that is much better quality and can do more in terms of the cinematography.



In post production to edit our film we used Final cut Express. This was because we didn't have any other software on the college computers, we only had this therefore our options were limited. But this wasn't a problem because it was very easy to use and navigate around. I had experience in using it therefore when I was editing I found it very easy to do so.







When I was creating the Title sequence for the film I was not in college therefore had no access to final cut express as I did not own it. So this was a problem. One thing I did have on my MacBook was Adobe
Premiere and I had used it before therefore it wasn't hard to create the title sequence. One problem we were concerned about was if it was possible for the two programs to work together and we found out it was so it was okay.




And finally when presenting my evaluation questions I used Microsoft powerpoint which I am very familiar with already so using it wasn't difficult.










Personally I feel editing on both pieces of software was very effective as it was much easier to do than I thought it was going to be. Especially creating the title sequence it was so easy to do and we ended up creating something that looked really good. using Final Cut was also very easy to use also and editing the film is one of the most important facts of about how successful it is so having these technologies it was very helpful. Also using blogger was very easy and made explaining things was much more better with the fact I was allowed to use different media formats to explain what i'm talking about. However there are a few things that were not successful with the new technology and this was the camera, I feel that it was too low of a quality and I feel that we could have done so much better with a better camera but then again we only had that camera to use and we had no other options.

So I have learnt an awful lot with preproduction about researching with blogger and the internet. I will definitely use blogger again when I do another film. Also I have learnt a lot more about editing on both final cut and Adobe Premiere that I will use next time.

Evaluation - Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience? 

Looking back at the film we made. Is it appropriate for the target audience we stated? Yes, I think it was. This is because there is blood and violence in the film but theres nothing that gruesome and we didn't show anything that could upset the viewers. Theres one part of the scene where the zombies flood into the room where the characters are in and then the characters kill the zombies but you don't actually see the zombie being killed, but you do see them dead or being pushed over. Also on the last shot the zombie was pushed over rather than killed. This is all done keeping our target audience in mind. So overall we used the research we did to really make it appropriate for the target audience.

 

We used a lot of different shots that were appropriate for our target audience and as stated we checked every shot to make sure it was right, we were unbelievably thorough when making sure all of what we were doing was suited to the target audience whether it be the script, the plot, the mise en scene, sound (music especially), the cinematography and the editing. We wanted to make sure the film was easy to view for the target audience and not too complicated for them to watch. One major decision we made was what I stated earlier about making sure none of the zombies were actually killed in shot. We did this because death is an upsetting thing and we thought some viewers would be affected by the death on screen, depending on how brutal the death is. Of course we knew that nothing could be too gory as it wouldn't fit with the guidelines for our film rating but not showing the actual death was our choice to make it more appropriate for their viewing.

Audience Feedback

Take a look at the audience feedback and you can see that our target audience was not gender specific so we were right to not choose this when targeting our audience. One thing that did surprise us is that there were people older than our target audience that enjoyed the film for what it was therefore that made us think of we should have had a wider age gap and targeted our film at more people so maybe that was a bad decision we made. But looking at it all, everyone enjoyed the film therefore targeting it like we did worked and appealed to the people we wanted it to appeal to. This meant that putting all that effort into making sure the shots we did collided with what the audience want to see was worth it and it proved really effective. One thing we did see when asking the audience what we could do to improve it was that they either said no there was nothing or make the zombie's and the setting look more like a horror film which wasn't really a problem as we knew this before, if we had only had a bigger budget, we could have done that.

There were many parts of the film that the audience thought were good and one of the main parts was the setting. The audience were very pleased with the hospital scene and they could tell that it was meant to be a hospital and most of them thought it was. They also could tell that our film was a zombie horror meaning that the general conventions for zombie horror were present in our film. So according the audience it was very successful. However they did pick up on the fact the mise en scene wasn't that strong compared to other zombie horrors but one thing they didn't understand is that we didn't have a budget for our film therefore couldn't often make the mise en scene that good.

Evaluation - Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

For us, targeting the audience is one of the most important parts of the success of the film but first we need to know who they are and know a bit about them. I think personally our target audience are people from the age of 15 - 25. This is because it is a zombie horror film and will include lots of blood and gore therefore can't be anything under a 15 as it's not appropriate for viewers under that age. But a lot of modern day horrors are getting lower age ratings as people get less scared these days and because the film industry is advancing so much. So films like ours that maybe once would have been an 18 are now 12's and 15's. So looking at our audience a lot of 15 - 25 year olds are in education or just starting jobs. This means they often have a lot of time on their hands to watch the films. Now because I personally fall into this age group, I can say that people my age love going to the cinema to watch these type of zombie horror films as your imagination is at it's prime at a younger age so you become much more drawn into the world that is created through this film. Looking more into our target audience there's not really much preference into the gender and race etc. as long as they are in our age group the film should appear to them. So what does our target audience like to do? Well many of our target audience like to go out with friends and social activity is the most popular thing that they do. I know this because of my experience in this age group and most of my friends fall into this age group also and we like doing social activities which often include seeing films.

We did a lot of research into our target audience. We did a personal questionnaire which we didn't publish but kept with us when thinking of how to shoot the film and what to include in it. This is because we only asked a few close friends that fitted into our age group. We also did a video questionnaire and interviewed our target audience. We gave them the plot of the film and after they read through it we asked their opinions and a few questions about the film. This is really good as it is primary research and we get first hand responses. Also we did some other research as in our theory side of the media we were discussing as a class about what way people like to watch films and 20% said the Cinema, 30% said online, 5% said through subscription (such as Sky) and 45% said through DVD's. This told us that distribution was also a very important fact. This meant that we had to look into different ways we could distribute our film we made some promotional items such as DVD covers and film posters. We did a lot with this research as it influenced every decision we made. For example when looking at the scene or shot we were filming we thought: 'Is this appropriate for our target audience based on what we researched?' and most of the time we thought yes and carried on shooting but there were a few shots that we thought were not right and we retook them. Also we did this whilst writing the script as if there was language in the script we thought was too childish or too adult we adjusted it so it was much better and more suited to our target audience. 

Evaluation - Question 3

This is the trailer for World War Z distributed by Paramount Pictures

A distribution method for advertising World War Z by Paramount Pictures

Evaluation - Question 2

Question 2:
 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Looking at our film in terms of the way the characters are represented we both abide by and avert the stereotypes. In terms of the main character David, he kind of goes against the stereotype in ways that he isn’t the really tough strong male character however you have to take into account that he has just come out of a coma therefore will be weak. But one quality he does have in the strength area as he survives. He is also expressed as vulnerable in the ways of the scene and cinematography as when he is being interrogated in the point of view shots he is inferior to Sarah and looking up at her showing that at this point he is weaker than she is, which stereotypically isn’t what would happen but because our characters do not follow the stereotypes. The reason for this is that we wanted to have a film where any character could be a leading character as the storyline and the plot is set in a whole new world and people have to change to adapt to this world and to survive. This means that characters go against their stereotypes as they’re creating a new personality in this new world. We feel that presenting them this way is effective because it opens the viewing experience to new things and you witness things you haven’t seen before.

 

Taking a look at gender, female characters are stereotypically often in jobs that are less intense and less dangerous due to the fact they’re portrayed weaker. If you take a look at our character profile of Sarah you will see that she was very high up in a job that was every dangerous. She isn’t like other women. She is a decision maker, a leader a strong character. The reason we portrayed her as a strong character as she is the only female in our two minute sequence therefore we wanted her to lead. We also wanted to abolish this sexist stereotype that women can’t be strong and can’t be leaders so in the duo of Sarah and Steve, Sarah is the strong one, the decision maker and ultimately the foundation of their survival. You often don’t get characters like Sarah in films however it is more common in zombie films but still even then they start off fitting the stereotype and then the character develops as the film goes on to show the change into the new world. You see character development in Carol from the walking dead. She starts off as vulnerable and weak, she does the washing up and cleaning and in her past job she was a housewife. Now this is a very stereotypical woman at first, but Carol grows into a strong willed, determined, decision maker and this new world changes her. We want to show this but we didn’t have time to show the development as we didn’t have long but we decided instead to go against the stereotype and bring her in straight away as a strong character. The male characters in this film looking especially at Steve, he is a strong character but steps back a bit to allow Sarah to lead. He is kind of like the muscle of the duo and when something needs to be done, he does it. Now this fits the stereotype of the man however goes against it also as most men want to be the alpha male and Steve doesn’t want this, he’s happy to let Sarah lead them and then he’s there for the strength when needed. But gender is represented in different ways but we like this fact as it gives diversity to our film.

One way the characters are represented is through cinematography. If you take a look at this two shot (above) David is lower than Sarah as in this point of the film she is superior to him due to the fact she’s interrogating him. This is also shown in the point of view shot as he is looking up at Sarah as if he is inferior to her. In which case he is at this moment due to the fact he is being interrogated. Using the cinematography in this way is an effective way of showing it without directly telling the audience what’s happening. In terms of sound the characters are shown also. One way is through the dialogue. This is shown when Sarah is shouting down to David, by having loud dialogue it shows that Sarah is a powerful character and isn’t afraid to assert her authority. This again goes against the stereotype of the fact that in this world, women would be scared and vulnerable. But by having loud dialogue shows that this isn’t the case. The mise en scene doesn’t really represent the characters, other than the costumes that they are wearing. For example the bandages that David has on show that he, at the moment is weak and vulnerable but other than that there isn’t much about the mise en scene that represents the characters, it’s mainly just cinematography.

Finally when I was researching characters in zombie films I didn’t research and strong women characters, I only researched the what’s known as the ‘Eye Candy’ which is the woman that is attractive that everyone likes but often dies because they are weak or vulnerable. I think this was a reason why we wanted a strong female character because after researching that most of the time the eye candy dies, we didn’t want any deaths for our female character so we made her strong and independent which is good.