Evaluation

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

Our media product uses most of our thriller conventions but we also added another level to it to portray our subgenre; psychological. Our product consist of a protagonist and an antagonist however we developed this idea of have just one character who represented both of these; it gave our product that nightmarish quality. There is a sense of voyerism throughout our thriller which may confuse our audience into beliving there is somebody watching over our sleeping character but it is revealed at the end when the antagonist is observing the protagonist in her mirror. IS this her reflection? or is this an actual different character? Is this her dreams? or her reality. This is left untold. We tried to challenge the conventions into our product to represent the confusion of our protagonist and her psycological state. We left out and typicality which may be seen in other psychological thriller; this included changing the gender of the main character (which is usually a male) and leaving out any thing to do with death.

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our product does not focus on any group; just on one dominant view of a little girl. We used such a girl because she demonstrates children of a small age whom have a wide range of creativity and imagine things that arent really happening in the dark and which can make anything seem alive but at the same time disturbing. The little girls psychological state could also show how the people around her influence her to such vivid images and corrupting something usually seen as so innocent and playful (dolls).

3) What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?

Film4 seems a most likely candidate to distribute our media product as they've had experience in showing a wide range of successful films of any genre and filmed in any period from films such as "Slumdog Millionaire" to "Kitchen sink" realistic films which seem to have came across as just as successful of other films that have been done on an unlimited budget.This is just our kind of product where we show a sort of realism (psychological problems) and give it an Americanised twist to it with the girl in the mirror. Although Film4 is a British film institute; they do screen some films with american aspects in them like ours.

4) Who would be the audience for your media project?

From our questionnaire and general research;our target audience would be between the ages of 15-25 of both genders. This is due to the fact that at this age, our audience still have that creativity on them and could still vividly remember what it was like for them at a younger age to sleep alone in the dark with their imagination running wild. We didn't think anyone younger than 15 would be suitable in watching our product as it's content is quite disturbing and might encourage them to be as scared as our protagonist at night. Older poeple however may not be able to relate to our product as well as our targeted audience.

5) How did you attract/address your audience?

We started researching thrillers (such as its conventions and sub-genres) and saw which ones were the most common or successful. We created a questionnaire to ask our potential audience questions we were not sure of or could not find answers to from other general research. The most common answers we recieved are the ones we used in our piece to satisfy our audience and to attact them more to it. We used visual effects in our piece to set the style and scene but also to seperate the past and the present.

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

From our preliminary exercise, I learnt how to arrange good shots and get them to be very effective. This became a big part in our final piece as we needed the best angles we could and make them mean something everytime. Using the tri-pod sometimes became difficults as it would only go so high and only go so low, and became a problem but we worked around it. The iMac computers was something i never used before and found it difficult using the new softwares. After a few lessons of just experimenting I became very adapted to it and could do things alot more easier, even if we did encounter a few more problems; there was always a way of solving it if that included importing some more footage or changing some scenes around. The iMovie programme did let us down quite regularly. Our preliminary exercise didn't work as i would have liked as it kept jumping and speeding up. We still do not know why that happened but we used what we could. Our final piece also took a while to edit as the programme often didn't let us crop our piece properly or add effects. However, we did overcome these problems and produce a good piece.

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

I have learnt to keep enough time of planning, filming (especially when we are deciding the date to do it) and editing. I have also learnt that it is best to have more than one idea in case one idea does not work out properly and to overlook our footage during filming incase it doesn't look as good as we want it to be or we've missed something out. Also, when editing, make sure that we have a long enough time to edit, in case the programme and technical equipment does not work properly. Furthermore, always keep up to date with what is going on with your group and always ask when you are not sure if you feel uncertain about something.