Evaluation

Media Evaluation

The media task was to produce a two minutes thriller clip over a period of roughly two months. Our media product was supposed to develop, challenge forms and conventions of real media products. Over the period that we had of planning time we were given lots of examples in class, watching films such as the shining, and were also shown last year’s AS thrillers which was good because it gave us an idea of what we had to do, what worked well and what had already been done. Over this time we also had tutorials in how to use the cameras and editing to work best with our thrillers. This was a good task as it would benefit us in the end.

My media thriller ‘The observer’ is about a girl being watched. Our choice of location costume and genre was pretty obvious to the task set to us. Costume was everyday clothes, the location was a computer room in the college which was convenient and as this was the type of place out thriller needed. The types of camera shots and movements were done to get the best out of the scenes we planned to film. We used long shots, close ups medium shots, over head shots, high and low angle shots to show a range of camera works. We chose the ones that best displayed the acting and to make it thrilling. During the editing we added the necessary sound effects to bring it together. We also added a few effects such as slow motion and black outs. 

Our thriller doesn’t really represent a certain social group, however it shows a young average student, which could be portrayed as the youth of today. Her age and status is shown by the costumes and location (college) as it accompanies it and shows us that she is a student.

The kind of media institution that might distribute our media product are ones such as Film 4 or Blockbuster because the thriller is something that has aspects of a real film that you could to watch at a cinema. Our film could also be a small independent U.K release or we could release it on the internet and networking sites because this would allow all different people to watch it.

                                                                                                               

I think that the main target audience for my thriller would be young people e.g. teenagers and people in their early 20’s as they can best interact with the character as they are around the same age group. However anyone who enjoys thrillers could also watch it they just may not enjoy it as much. Male and females may both like this as it isn’t biased in any way.

To address my audience and attract them, i will have to use different advertising strategies. There are many ways in which i can do this. Firstly i can advertise them on websites such as Myspace and Facebook by having different pages where people can explore and get information on the film. I could also view the trailers on websites such as Youtube. Posters are also a good old fashioned way of attracting the audience.

Over the process of making my thriller I have learnt how to use a lot. Firstly we had to get used to the Mac computers although I was already familiar with them. I learnt how to use final cut pro which was a hard task but once I got used to it was alright. I’m glad I learnt this as it has taught me new skills that I can use later on in my career. We learnt how to log and capture our work after each day of filming which was helpful in case we lost any film. This also helped me to get used to the Mac computers. We learnt to use sound track to put the sound into our thriller which actually played an important part of the editing. As well as using the computers we had to learn how to use the camera which was obviously the biggest part of the process. Luckily my group all pretty much got the hang of using them quickly and we didn’t experience any trouble with them. The cameras we used were very good and efficient and I’m glad I learnt how to work them. We learnt how to use WebPages such as www.blogger.com in which we had to leave regular blogs of our progress throughout the task. We also used www.vimeo.com to upload all our finished pieces. This was topped off by a viewing of the years work at the VUE cinema in Islington. This was a great opportunity and experience as its likely your work will never be shown on a screen like that again.

                                                 

Looking back over my preliminary task I feel I have learnt a lot within the progression to the full product. I learnt that planning and organisation is very important as it provides the stability for you work and makes things run according to plan. Research is important to know about existing products. i learnt how to work well in a group and with my chosen team members. Most importantly i learnt to work under pressure and i am happy without final piece. Our thriller got a good reaction in the screening at the cinema, and therefore i believe we done well in our task.