Evaluation of the Final Project(Rough Work)

This post is a rough evaluation which i wrote to make sure that i have enough content to write my fair evaluation. This is thus a practice evaluation attempt. The "fair" and proper evaluation questions are answered on the First and Second pages of the blog.

We had to answer the following questions to evaluate our final film:

Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Answer:

- Our film is from the suspense/horror/slasher genre. Such films require some enigma and since we have been doing opening titles, we tried to create some enigma at the end of the opening title after some slow paced shots.

- Though there are no marks for it, good acting was necessary in our film because we needed to be able to describe the reactions of the actor and make it clear for the audience to know the atmosphere of the time and for that good acting was needed.

- We have also broken a convention of slasher films. Mostly the male is the killer, however in our film, the female is the killer. We hope that this will attract females to watch our movie as well.

- We have also used betrayal as our theme and also as the reason that causes the girl Ria to take revenge from Henry. That is explained a bit through the voiceovers in the answering machine.

- The color for Ria’s clothes were black because it portrayed her as being the killer and also as the person who would take revenge. The color black often represents gloom, revenge, anger hatred etc. so that is why we used Ria’s dressing in black.

- We kept the shade in our film dark purposely, to bring in the mystery and gloom that was to come in the end. We used soundtracks as well to create the thrilling atmosphere. We used tracks by two musicians. Kevin Macleod(http://incompetech.com/) and Danish.

- We used formal dressing for Henry to show that he was a rich person and also to show that he was in his twenty’s as well as we needed to show that he was an older person and our actor was seventeen. The shot of Henry coming in the car also showed that he was a rich person, a mature person, having a driver added to it as well. We chose my house for the location because we thought that a big house would add to the personality of the character of Henry.

- In the opening credits we gave the name of Dimension Films and our own production company as we had seen it in many films that although the logo would appear separately, their names would be given in the opening credits as well. It was just something we used to make the film seem more professional. 

 




- Most production companies have their own logos so we made one for our group.

Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Answer:

- The only social group it represents is the high class society and some of it is depicted through the dialogues of the two girls who have left messages on his answering machine. Those dialogues show the way of talking and conversing of the high class society.

- Our film also represents the females in this modern age and their behavior towards males, especially in the high class society and this is also done through the dialogues of the answering machine.

- The formal dressing of Henry and his house and car show that he is a rich man and that he belongs to the high class society.

- We have also shown the betrayal and unfaithfulness between couples in the high class society and the eagerness for revenge.

- The reason why Henry acts really tired is because he comes from a party and this is further clarified through the messages heard on Henry’s answering machine. It depicts the undisciplined and care free attitude of the high class society and the types of social gatherings they have.

Nearly done with the Final Project and Storyboard

On the 13th of February 2011, we completed our editing phase for our final Media Studies Project. All that is left is a few sounds that need to be added. We have used music by Kevin Macleod, a professional musician who has royalty free music on his website and allows his music to be used for free without copyright. We have also used a track made by a local musician by the name of Danish, from Pyramid Studios, Karachi. 
All the group members i.e. Andrew, Afia and I played a part in editing. Each of us took part in editing,  I mainly edited the soundtracks that we have used in our film. I have also made the logo and added sound effects to it. Since our project is nearly complete, we hope to upload our videos by the end of this week on our blogs and we are happy with the movie so far and I hope that our audience would also be captivated by our film and watch it.

This was our storyboard.

Evaluation (Rough Work)

This evaluation is practice work which i attempted so that my final evaluation would have more details and materials. The final evaluation is on the first two pages on the blog.

I had to answer the following questions to evaluate our final film:


Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?


Answer:
- Our film is from the suspense/slasher genre. Such films require some enigma in their opening titles and so we tried to create some enigma at the end of the title after some slow paced shots.
- We kept the shade in our film dark purposely, to bring in the mystery and gloom that was to come in the end.
- We have also broken a convention of slasher films. Mostly the male is the killer, however in our film, the female is the killer. We hope that this will attract females to watch our movie as well.
- The slow pace of the shots keeps the film in a serious atmosphere and builds the mood for the enigma to come in.


Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?


Answer:
- The formal dressing of Henry and his house and car show that he is a rich man and that he belongs to the high class society.
- The only social group it represents is the high class society and some of it is depicted through the dialogues of the two girls who have left messages on his answering machine. Those dialogues show the way of talking and conversing of the high class society.


Q3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?


Answer:
Our group chose "Dimension Films" as our institution because the institution has made a lot of slasher films and many famous ones in fact.


Q4: Who would be the audience for your media product?


Answer:
We expect the age group of 18 years to 30 years to watch our film as it is a mixture of betrayal in love and also murder, something that will definitely attract males and females both.


Q5: How did you attract or address your audience?


Answer:
Since the film is a suspense/slasher, we decided to keep the momentum of the film slow so that at the right time the suspense and thrilling effect can be created. Our focus was the ending of the opening title which made it perfect to attract the audience and to show them that the film has some very interesting turns.


Q6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of construction this product?


Answer:
- Camera angles and movement was one of the aspects that revealed that its not easy to shoot a film. It requires skill and practice.
- The different softwares that we experienced using showed that practice is needed there as well, however, once everything is learnt, it is child's play.
- We used online surveys, rather than writing them, and posted them on facebook to address our audience and to get some response. We really have gotten some response. What led us to this thought was that in this modern age nearly everyone uses the internet and on such social networks there are people we really don’t know, which would be great to carry out surveys.
- We made blogs, one of the main things in media studies, to carry out the analysis and update each and everything about our project and what we have learnt so far.
- A significant part was played by cell phones. We were able to communicate with each other without hindrance.
- Email also played a vital role. We were able to attach different things related to our project and send it to each other. This was quite helpful as it saved time for completing the project.


Q7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full?


Answer:
- One of the most weak points in our preliminary film was the camera angles and movement part, which we have improved and have a much broader view of how to take shots now. In our preliminary film, we had shot our actors just from one angle, which did not seem quite good when it was edited. This taught us that we need to change the angles to make the film more interesting to watch.
- We also learned how important a story board is to make a film as it puts life into it. Our film had a simple story of a bully being called to the principal’s office and their conversation being shown.
- The Mise-en-scene is another of the things in a film that we knew nothing about when we started, but now we pay more attention to it as it is very important to bring reality to the film. We shot our preliminary film in our school’s media lab, and in the background all the computers and chairs could be seen. The room did not look like a principal’s office. Our principal was wearing a school uniform, the same our bully was. We had a bad experience of lighting as well.
- Sound is another important aspect of a film. The sound in a film also helps to bring life to films but it also helps in building the mood in the film which is very necessary. We did not use any music in our preliminary film but will in our final.
- We learnt how to edit our video on Adobe Premier Pro and also learnt how to use Adobe After Effects as well, which is an animation and special effects software. The use of After Effects can be seen through our group’s logo as well as the title of our film, i.e. “Sweet Vengeance”.