Evaluation

Media
Evaluation
 
1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of media products?
Our film, Fixation, is a psychological horror with a stalker sub-genre. It uses quite a lot of the generic stalker film iconography and key themes. When watching similar films such as, 'Cape Fear' and 'The Loved Ones.' I noticed that they all share similar ideas about what it means to be a stalker. They both show obviously disturbed individuals right from the beginning. However, our film challenges this as it begins by showing what seems to be an ordinary man. It is not until later on in the opening title sequence that it reveals he has a more sinister agenda. The majority of our opening scene is close-ups to show the man beginning his morning routine. This is another unconventional aspect as he is at first portrayed as a normal member of society. Our plot is linear as it follows the story chronologically. Some of the normal iconography used in stalker films is included in our short film; these include things such as knives, dark shadows and a vulnerable character. We took inspiration from the film, ‘The Loved Ones’ in this aspect.

We used the same music throughout the opening sequence. We did rhythmic editing so every time we cut the music hit a beat, this can be seen very well on the end credits. It's very classical, with instruments such as the violin and piano. This is supposed to show our main character as an intellectual. This is also revealed in the mise-en-scene; the man neatly combed his hair and wore a shirt and tie. He looks smart and professional, almost like he is getting ready for a day at the office. However, he is not; instead he is preparing to visit the girl he is holding captive in his basement. This challenges the usual stalker characters seen in psychological horrors, as at times they mean seem unkempt. We took inspiration from Robin William’s characters in One Hour Photo. They both have a similar disposition and outfit.








The majority of camera shots we chose to do where close-ups apart from a few. Close-ups where an integral part of our film as we didn’t want the identity of the stalker to be known, we wanted it to be a mystery. Close-ups enabled us to show what he was doing, but not his face.

Other shots we used in our film where long-shots. These helped establish the scene; it also showed many of the shadows and creates a fear within the audience because they don’t know where the girl is.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Fixation does represent the stereotypical female character. This is because the main female character is seen on the screen in a very stereotypical 'damsel in distress' sort of way. This situation is commonly seen in sub-genre stalker films as it is usually the female who is being stalked other than in such films as, 'Fatal Attraction.' It is usually the male who is stalking as he is seen as the dominant and possessive character. The female is usually always helpless and in need of saving, which is why her brother is the one to eventually rescue her. The main male character is also generally shown in low-angle shots to show dominance and power which is a common stereotype of men. The female is also always shown in a dark room, filled with shadows to represent her fear and vulnerability. It is common in psychological horrors for the female to be in the vulnerable position.

This idea is shown in such films as 'Psycho.' The female character is portrayed as helpless and vulnerable while the male always has the upper hand. I believe that our film will attract an audience of 15-45 as this is what the characters range from. We are confident that it will appeal to both men and women as these characters are all used. The age of the audience is also reflected in our rating which is a 15.

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I feel that the distribution company most suited to our film would be, 'Soda Pictures.' They have distributed many psychological horror films and are a small company that works with mainly low budget films such as ours. Many of the audiences who generally watch Soda Pictures films would most likely also be interested in our film too. Also the majority of their films have moderately sized cinema releases and I feel that ours would too. They also offer a wide range of radio and TV adverts and trailers that I feel our film could widely benefit from.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
Our target audience is both men and woman from the ages of 15 to 45 plus. I feel that our film would be successful in targeting this audience as all of the characters are similar ages and the plot lines is usually very popular among this age group as seen in recent films. In our questionnaire everyone who was in the age range said they would watch our film. It also fits with the age certificate of 15, viewers who are any younger than this may find the content too scary.

We did a questionnaire for viewers of the film using Google Questionnaire and found that the majority of people willing to watch a film such as the one we created where in the age range of 15-45 which is what we where aiming for. They also suggested that a lot of their favourite genres of film where psychological horrors. Most of the comments that we received from this specific audience where that our idea sounds good and that the story-line seemed interesting and unique to them. It was a mash-up of the film Brick and One Hour Photo so there an element of mystery and action as well as the sub-stalker genre. A lot of the audience that didn't really like the scary aspect did like action films. So by adding the element of action we reached out to a new type of audience.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?
We have attracted our target audience by making one of the main characters, Sky, the same age group. We also included generic psychological horror and stalker iconography and music to attract fans of the same genre. The opening builds a lot of tension as it is quite slow and the face of the stalker is never actually revealed. He could be anybody, it's a mystery. There is also a lot of low-lighting, which fills the shots with shadows and fear. This is more apparent in the basement scene, all the light is on the girl so it is quite difficult to see any details about the room. The audience, like the girl have no idea where she is or who is holding her captive. When the girl is first introduced the camera pans very slowly to build tension and create suspense. The darkness and unsteady, blurred shot creates fear and confusion. The end of the shot shows the stalker slowly walking toward the girl, it has a very creepy feel. He walks into the camera to show all black so the titles can start. It is unknown what he was going to do next.

I believe we have used a wide variety of shots such as close-ups, over-the-shoulder shots, medium-shots, low-angle and high-angle shots. We displaced 180 degree rule and the editing was very smooth making for a pleasant watch. We used a lot of fading to slow down the speed and make it a lot smoother. Also, at two parts a character walks into the camera to show black so we could cut to the next shot. This proved to make the flow of the film a lot more crisp and flowing.

After we acquired some of the audience feedback through comments and interviews we decided what was less and successful and what we could have done to make this better. A lot of the feedback suggested that we didn't include dialogue such as, "whose there?" as they thought that this decreased the level of suspense and fear within the shot. If we could re-do the film I would have not put in this speech and relied on the use of facial expressions and mise-en-scene to convey the confusion and fear within the girl.


6. What have you learnt about technology from the process of constructing the product?
A lot of our scenes, especially in the basement, required dark contrasting light to give the appearance of an ulterior motive as the shadows create fear. We took inspiration from the film genre, film noir in the sense of the lighting. To do this we took lights from college and used the TV broadcasting room in the new building of college to do the basement scenes. This made it a lot easier as you could attach the lights to the ceiling, something that you can't do at home. It made the basement, hanging old light look more believable.

At each stage of the production of our film we use several different technologies to aid the process. These included Google search engine, You tube to look at different opening sequences for inspiration, DVD's and Seltex to write our script easily as it was the first time we where making one. The DVD's where especially useful for me as the extras helped give a lot of extra needed help and ideas when it came to creating our film.

Google blogger is what we used to chronicle the process of making our film. This was very useful as it allowed us to use questionnaires to get quick feedback we could make into pie charts. The software, Final Cut Express was also useful as this is what we used to edit our final film and add sound. We found it very easy to use and our editing looked smooth in the end.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to your full product?
In our first task we learned all of the techniques necessary to add continuity to our film. These included, 180 degree rule, eye line match, match on action and shot reverse shot. We didn't use lighting in this task we used in our final coursework. The techniques learnt did come in useful though as we knew what to check for so the continuity was right. Also, we found our camera, editing and basic knowledge of filming has improved a lot. This was especially apparent in the use of the camera, it was a lot easier to know what shot to use and when to use it. I felt that a lot of the work came slightly more naturally and it took a lot less time to film shots.