Evaluation

Media Evaluation

REVELATIONS: Final Piece

EVALUATION QUESTIONS

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


- Discuss the ways in which your thriller incorporates generic conventions, identify specific scenes.
- How does your thriller develop or challenge these conventions.
- Does the use of conventions indicate what sub-genre or hybrid genre your thriller is?
- Does your use of conventions indicate what other thrillers have influenced your work? If so, then be specific with examples.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
   
   
   - What are the social groups represented in terms of gender, age, class, race etc?
   -Is gender represented in a stereotypical way? i.e. men dominant and women passive.
   -How does this link into the target audience? (explore this fully in question four)
   
   
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
   
   
   - Would this be something that could be produced by a major Hollywood studio, if yes then why? Is it similar to existing productions?
   - Would it be a TV movie?
   - Would it be an arthouse film?
   - Would it be an internet release only?
   - Why would it be released? Does it offer opportunities for franchise and /or merchandising?
   - Link your conclusions to a discussion of the mise en scene (visual style) of your thriller.
   
   
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
   
   
   - Consider the age and gender of your target audience. Link this to the narrative and style of your film.
   - What other films are similar to yours, who did they appeal to?
   
   
5. How did you attract or address your audience?
   
   
   - Link this into your audience profile (i.e. what age and gender they are)
   - are there particular points in your film that would appeal to or particularly terrify a Certain age group or gender? If yes then explain them in detail.
   - Consider the use of camerawork in this section i.e. point of view shots.
   - Who is the audience asked to put themselves in the position of, what are they being allowed to witness?
   - What impact does that have?
   - Link this back to generic conventions and the creation of suspense.
   
   
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
   
   
   - Strengths and weaknesses of the camera equipment.
   - Salk about the filming process, was there problems you faced, how did you resolve those issues?
   - Did you get to use new equipment that enhances your thriller? i.e. the dolly.
   - Editing software- Premier Pro. What have you learnt about editing, where there particular effects that you found useful for creating your overall mise en scene?
   - Link in exact time points when you are talking about a specific bit of your product.
   
   
7. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

- Discuss the planning stage, the research into genre, storyboarding, creating the anamatic  and explain how this detailed planning helped you to produce a thriller. i.e. you knew what shots you need to capture and what order to edit it in. this helps the process to be smoother.
- Has your use of specific shot types improved? i.e. match on action, point of view.
- Do you feel more confident with the equipment?
- How successful do you feel your end product is as fulfilling the task? (look back at the main blog at the task).

Titles: Fonts

Yesterday Imogen and Charlee began to look at fonts to use for the titles. As we're making a horror-thriller we decided that it would be smart if we use a font which is fits in with this. 

This was the first font they considered. Personally I think this this would be a safe choice as this font is a font that was specifically designed to look imposing and strong. It would suit our films titles although the font is kind of cheesy, the decaying letters and tall letters is something i feel has been used a ton before and I personally think a different font would be better.

The second font that was looked at is also quite spooky and I like the way they letters are thin and creepy, unfortunately it doesn't really fit in with the theme of our film. The thin letters and curves make the letters seem almost quite feminine which isn't conventional for a thriller film, especially ours when our protagonist is a male. Fonts in thrillers tend to be sans serif and quite bold and bright which this one isn't. This font is one we most probably will not be used in our title sequence.

The third font which they proposed was this, it's very similar to the first one however we have agreed that we prefer it as it's big, bold and a conventional style of font for a thriller. This along with the slight difference in height between the letters which we think look quite creepy is wy we will be using this font in our title sequence.

This font is called 'Dirty Headline'.

Filming: Dialogue

This is the script that Beth wrote and we agreed on for Archbishop Hartley (Luis) and Our news annoumcer (Finley):

Announcer:

Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen and welcome to Spotlight. Here today to explain to us the dramatic resigning of Pope Benedict due to the Saint sinner killings. The Lords messenger Arch Bishop Hartley.

Hartley:

May our lord bless you and keep you citizens of God we have received information about the dead sinners who whilst their sin was great their souls were redeemable without this violence.

Announcer:

What is the church doing about this situation?

Hartley:

Well we are obviously working with the police on these so called Saint Sinner murders and are trying to solve this as quickly as possible. There will not be a government enquiry but these murders are in no way connected to the resignation of the Pope.

Announcer:

I think the public will refuse to believe that, we all know what’s going on in the Vatican and no one here would be surprised if one of your alter boys turned and did the killings. We all know the treatment they get.

Hartley:

Obviously this has nothing to…The Vatican is in no way implicated, no minister or vicar is involved this is obviously a fanatic carrying out God’s work.

Announcer:

Are you saying you agree with the killings?

Hartley:

Obviously this is an observation upon the prophecy and the true Christians are being tested. I assure you everything is being done to persecute them but…

Announcer:

That wasn't an answer to my question

Hartley:

Well obviously I don’t agree but in principle Satan and his hoards must be punished.

Announcer:

Final question then your Holiness.

Hartley:

Yes, fire away

Announcer:

Where is your God now?


We will film the two characters separately reading the script to camera using a green screen backdrop. This way we can give the backgrounds of the shots the appearance of a news studio and a church as well as graphics that news reports give such as times, location and the 'Live' symbol, giving the interview a better sense of verisimilitude. 

REVELATIONS: Second Draft

This is our second draft, this is completely different to our first draft as we didn't use any of the same footage as the footage that we previously used we felt needed to be changed. I think this this has improved so much and is a lot better than our first draft.

At the start of the second draft, the TV has nothing playing on it and this is something that will be done for our final as we have not yet been able to film the section that will be placed in this part of the film.

There is also no non-diegetic sound or music and this is also something that will be rectified in our next and hopefully final draft. We hope to not need to change to much in order to finish but we will change and re-shoot any segments we feel is necessary. 

Editing

Since we went out and did a re-shoot we now have to work on the re-edit. In our second draft we agreed as a team that we thought there were a few too many fades in between cuts. This time we are going to need to do some more jump cuts and try some different transitions to create more of a pace as the scene in the second draft seemed very slow and this did not cause tension as we want to. We've now started use cuts to the room where the torture victims are, so when the protagonist gets up and starts walking it cuts to the garage showing the victims current state as the protagonist approaches them. We've done these sections in with added effects such as black and white toggle, Gaussian blurs, find edges and the brightness and contrast sliders and have used these effects for each cut and each transition to the the separate room. The use of the black and white filter was an idea that we have had since the beginning and we are really happy that we have kept this plan throughout our coursework. The black and white is useful to us as its a connotation that the room shown in black and white is a dark and dangerous place that is separated from the safe colourful rest of the house. At first we were worried that this would look like a flash back opposed to something happening in a different room parallel two the main scene, but after showing a few people they assured us that they understood what was happening.