Evaluation of the Final Project (QUESTION 1)

Q.1 In what ways does you media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media

products ?

There are indeed many forms and conventions used in our final project, which are also seen in real media products. For example: in many movies of the slasher/horror genre the "action" is not fast paced and is more moderate paced. Some scenes indeed lack action and it is the skill of the filmmaker that is

put to use in these kind of shots(to build up enigma in such shots).

Firstly, in most slasher movies enigma builds up when the "victim" (which in my case is a male)

has no clue of what will happen to him. He is going on with his everyday life when the viewers are

shown "Semiotics" or signs which help them identify that something will happen to the victim.

There are many examples of such films for example House of Wax, Glass House: The Good Mother,

Saw 2 and Saw 3. But the movie which most closely resembles ours is Glass House: The Good Mother.

The opening scene begins with the Victim (male) going about his everyday life with his wife. The use of

Semiotics can easily be identified for example: the first shot begins with the wife cleaning the sink and we can clearly see

 blood which develops tension in audience's mind(they are sure that something is just not correct about the woman) / gives the impression of a sociopath.

(when the victim is about to put fresh fish for his wife to cut in the same sink we saw earlier, the wife does not approve. This indirectly tells the audience that the woman may be disagreeing because of a number of reasons.Some strings are left unattached so that the audience can make up their own story(on a number of occasions).

This gives the audience a sense that the "killer" is either mentally disabled or is

a "sociopath". The killer is of course the woman , as semiotics have been used to "display" her as a unique character.

We have also used various semiotics in our movie to create enigma so that the audience

Won’t be able to take their eyes off the screen, for example: when the victim of our movie returns home, his

television set is already running and also the signal has been disrupted. This alerts the audience to ask themselves whether someone

 is hiding in the house waiting to strike. This results in enigma and a sense of horror and anticipation. (also the disrupted signal on the TV has been used in a number of movies before so that in itself is a code for the audience and when they see it they know something is wrong- and it symbolizes the isolation of the victim.)

Above: A screenshot of the television signal disruption from our movie. When the victim enters the house, the

television is already on and the signal is disrupted. A sign that somebody may have already intruded into the

house before the victim.

Secondly, sound is an extremely important component in horror films. Thus we took plenty of time

deciding on the sound. I have followed the conventions of real media products with my sound effects/tune which is similar to Glass House:

Good Mother and the Saw series. The sound treatment of these films starts off with a soothing tune and slowly develops

into a more deep and menacing track which increases anticipation of the audience in the film.

Thirdly, most of our time was spent in deciding on treatment of the shots of our film. The shots have a major impact in affecting

what the audience will think of our film. Many shots closely resemble the shots in real media films, for

example: this is a comparison of the opening shot from our video and of the movie "House of Wax".

Above: The opening shot from Glass House: The Good Mother and a similar shot which we used in our

film.

Shots like these usually have a slow accompanying soundtrack. This is the shot which gives the audience a

rough idea of "WHERE" the scene is taking place, the surroundings, day or night etc. Shots like these are

usually set at night but we broke this convention because we wanted to make the audience think of early

dawn when we shot this. (The victim of our film is back from partying probably at a nightclub or bar).

We have shown high class society and thus we have shown a south asian whose nickname is Henry ,  his age has been shown roughly in his early 20’s. 

We also focused greatly on the logo of the other production companies. We observed that although the logo of the production company is shown usually in the very beginning of the film , the names of the team appear a while later. We decided to follow that convention. The first image you see below is the logo of our media team , while the second shot of a widely recognized institution "Twisted Pictures".

Codes and conventions challenged: 
One of the very main conventions of the horror/slasher film genre which we broke was that we did not show the male as the killer. Although this has already been done in Glass House : Good Mother (shown the female as the killer) , it is common to show the male as the killer in the genre. We did this because we thought that this would attract females to watch our film , most females may not watch the film from the slasher genre because most movies show the victims of the plot to be females. We , on the other hand , chose to make the female gender "stronger" and more influencing in  our movie as compared to the male victim. We thought that females would enjoy watching "their" gender in power which is rarely seen in the genre.


Another convention which we broke was that mostly these films represent white people as the actors etc. We decided to represent and chose South Asian actors as we belong to a South Asian Country and we wanted to represent our people in the film.

Evaluation of the Final Project (QUESTION 2)

Q.2 How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The title of our media product is "Sweet Vengeance”, as the name suggests it is about vengeance to right a wrong. Our product mainly represents two social groups. Firstly, it represents females

who are usually either betrayed or cheated. Such women (like the killer shown in our film) are

more likely to become mentally challenged and thus commit crimes at least according to certain gender stereotypes- the kind of stereotypes one finds in slasher films.

 From our movie, we have tried to

make our audience more aware that the crimes which those women commit are to be blamed on the

people who cheat on them. We have used silent semiotics in various parts of our film to make the audience

understand the story.

Above: The female killer has been shown as a damaged person in our film. She is mentally not stable, which explains

why she seeks revenge from our male character. We have tried to explain that this happens in real life as

well and should be stopped before more people harm each other.

Secondly, our media product also represents the young generation. Mostly, people from the age 18-26

are in a very fragile state mentally. And if such people consume an excess of alcohol and drugss they commit crimes which they later may

regret. We want to make society aware of the consequences of such freedoms at this age. This mostly

happens in the elite class of society who have a lot of money to spend. They are usually the ones which

can afford to go to expensive nightclubs etc.

Above: A screenshot of our victim. We have made him look rich. He is shown getting out of his own car

with his personal driver. Only people who have a lot of money can afford such luxuries.

Our point was to criticize, what our society is going through. What we have shown is very

common amongst a certain class and, we have tried our best to deliver this message to the audience.

Above : People traveling in public transport in Karachi , Pakistan unlike our main character. This shows that our main character is of high class society as the majority of the people in our country do not have the money to afford car and driver.

We have also tried to show infidelity and betrayal in high-class society and eagerness to get revenge.

We especially wanted to stress on the "high class" because such incidents usually occur with people who

have  a lot of money and thus have a lot of leisure time to spend.

Below: a shot of our male character (HENRY)’s house.

Below : A shot of Burns Road , Karachi which shows a busy street with multiple apartments. Burns Road is usually occupied by poorer people (usually living on rent) nowadays. The majority of the population in our country lives in such small apartments and busy streets. On the other hand our character "Henry" has been shown living in a peaceful suburban residential area without traffic etc.

Henry also has an answering machine which is uncommon and most people do not cannot afford it. This is another indication of high class society.

Furthermore , Henry receives messages from two girls on his answering machine. This is very uncommon in Pakistan. Pakistan is a religious state and the majority of people here are Muslims. Muslim society does not allow young men and girls to interact with each other. In fact most girls do not even attend Co-education schools as it is the decision of their parents not to let them. The girls are shown to be fluent in English which is a privilege only the high class society can afford as most girls do not even get the chance to get higher education due to the early marriage customs in Pakistan.

Above : Girls in a classroom in Pakistan (Only Girls School).

The names of our characters Henry and Ria are acually the character's nicknames. Since we have represented high class society our characters have nicknames and want to be called or known by those names. This is true in modern society of Pakistan. They are basically Muslims but they want to be called by only those names which they like.
Our female killer character "Ria" has been deliberately shown a killer to attract female audience. Since most girls in Pakistan are not like that , we thought that they may be fascinated to see how some girls even may react to male. So we broke this convention of showing the killer as male and victim as female.
Our film also has a South Asian Cast. We wanted to represent our country so we decided to cast South Asians in our films. Secondly , since most films in the slasher/horror film genre have scarce South Asian cast , we thought that it would be a good idea to implement this new idea and we thought it would attract South Asian audience greatly. 

Evaluation of the Final Project (QUESTION 3)

Q.3 What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

We felt that "Dimension Films" would be a likely institution  to distribute our media product. This is due to

various reasons.

Firstly, Dimensions films has been producing slasher films since 2005. Dimension films has been

very successful with this genre and has produced many top of the charts movies in its time. Dimension films is a big

and respected company and as it is being respected in the market , we think that if it were to market and

distribute our media product then many audiences would purchase our product only because Dimension

Films has a good reputation in the market. Thus it would indeed help us market our products so that it

reaches the audience. Once it reaches the audience, we hope that the audience would probably like it

and thus would benefit both the Dimension Films and us as well.

Some of Dimensions Films famous Slasher/Horror movies are:

Scream (1996)

Scream 2 (1997)

Scream 3 (2000)

Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995)

Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering (1996)

Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror (1998)

Children of the Corn 666: Isaac's Return (1999)

Children of the Corn: Revelation (2001)

Furthermore , Dimension Films has had a excellent reputation in making horror/slasher films and they have a large loyal fanbase which is indeed why most of their films have been top-of-the-charts.

Evaluation of the Final Project (QUESTION 5)

Q.5 How did you attract/address your audience?

There were several ways in which we attracted our audience towards our final media product.  Firstly , the sound(lead and backing soundtrack) which we used in Sweet Vengeance was very soothing . Not only to our ears but also to our audiences’ ears.  We carried out a viewing of our film in our school during school hours (as mentioned in Evaluation Q-5) and we saw that when the movie started the audiences were relaxed and they didn’t look as if they were in a state of shock etc. But, from the scene where “Henry” enters his house and the Television signal distortion scene, the soundtrack changes to a more deep and in lay man’s words “Scary” soundtrack. During this period, we noticed that some of our audience came up closer to the screen to analyze what was going on, and some on the other hand already looked horrified.  So, the sound was one method we used to attract our audience.

Secondly, we kept dialogues in our product to a minimum. This enabled the audience to focus more attention on our soundtrack rather than the dialogues.  Besides the answering machine recordings , there were no additional dialogues added to the movie. Soundtracks, if used correctly and at the correct time can influence and change the tempo of the film completely and we wanted to implement this.

Thirdly, we did not give out everything in our opening titles. After viewing popular slasher film opening titles we found that  opening titles are meant to attract audience to watch the whole feature length film rather than give all of the suspense away by adding unnecessary details. We immediately cropped out the details we had put in our unedited version of Sweet Vengeance. We created enigma, and left “some strings unattached” i.e. some parts of the story to be discovered by the audience itself. This would motivate the viewers to demand the feature length film.

Above: We have purposely shown the Television already open and disrupted when our male character Henry enters his house. This makes the majority of the audience ask themselves “Why is this Television on?” “Did someone already visit his house when he was away?” “Is someone hiding in his house at the moment waiting to strike?” This creates enigma and horror, and the environment we wanted to create in our movie for our audience so they “keep wanted more”.

By the end of our opening title, the audience would have many questions unanswered, for example: Why did the female want to kill the male? Was the male drunk when he got home? Did he party all night? Did the male survive then? Was this all a dream? Will the male wake up in his bed now? So there is a definite chance that the audience would want to watch the full film.

There are many things which would attract the audience towards our films. The title "Sweet Vengeance" hides alot , makes the audience want to find out more. For example: mostly , the audience would definetly want to know what "Henry" did , why is the girl following him? The misc-en-scene would attract the audience , being a horror story it is shot in an isolated house , which is a very common convention for horror/slasher films for example: SAW 2 and HOUSE OF WAX were also shot in isolated houses and were very sucessful.

Evaluation of the Final Project (QUESTION 6)

Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

We have learnt a great deal about using new technologies during constructing our opening title.  Firstly, we learnt how to use many new editing software which helped in the making of our opening title. Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, Adobe After Effects CS4 and CS5 and Sony Vegas are the software we mainly used. At first, we didn’t know how to operate them but with consistence, patience and experimenting we were able to learn a great deal. Technology has indeed brought us closer together and thus we are able to take advantage of some softwares which made our final product look better and more professional.

Above: A shot of our edited footage of our previous car scene (which was later cut to save time). We shot this in daylight but we wanted our footage to imitate early dawn so we edited this footage in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. We used the “4 Color Gradient” to adjust the colors on each side of the footage. By using this software we were successfully able to “tint” our footage.

Above: We made our title using Adobe After Effects CS4. We used the “Jiggy” effect to make our title look more interesting and horrifying.

Above: We were able to make Polls by using Internet. This helped us in gathering data from our audience so that we could clearly see our target audience and improve our opening title till the end. So we were able to exactly know about the likes of different people and our target audience in general.

Above: A screenshot of editing our footage in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.  We were also able to connect with each other, by using email and send footages to each other so we could utilize our time and finish our project in time. This helped us in saving up time for evaluation and correcting mistakes.  In other words, Technology has made our life easier. Overall i think that technology is a blessing because it has made us save time and create a better product more efficently and easily.

 

Evaluation of the Final Project (QUESTION 7)

Q.7 Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full project?

We have leant a great deal when we look back at our preliminary task. We have worked on everything in our final film- which we did not do earlier: Mise-en-scene, Camera Angles and Movements, Character placement, Editing and Sound. When we first began our Preliminary task we didn’t know how to use various software and only knew the very basics of Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. This ultimately affected our final product greatly.

Above: A snapshot from our Preliminary Task. The background was meant to imitate a principal’s office. Notice the poor background (therandom door, the computer wiring etc) which is not usually found in a principal’s office. The office was meant to look formal. Also in this shot, notice that there is not enough headroom and too much space behind the subject’s head. At the time we could not use modern editing techniques thus we could only rely on the camera and our amateur shooting skills.

Above: A snapshot from our final film “Sweet Vengeance”, notice enough headroom in this shot. This place is a rich person’s house. Notice the large Television and Channel Surround Sound speakers which only a well off person can afford. We also edited this in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4; we used Auto-Contrast and Auto-Color to adjust the uneven color of the environment.

Above: Another snapshot from our Preliminary Film.  We shot this in school premises so you can easily notice that the Student and Principal (in the above snapshot) are wearing the same uniform. This was a huge mistake and we made sure that in our final opening titles we made our character’s wear proper dresses which matched the environment we were trying to create.  Also notice that there is white board.

Above:  A Snapshot from our final film. Notice that although we shot this in daylight, we have added the 4-color gradient in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 to make the environment look more like early dawn than daylight. 

The snapshot above is the “very simple” ending of our preliminary film. It shows the credits flying away. It is approximately 5 seconds long. Notice that the font is very simple and there are no effects used. Such titles would be a waste of time for viewers if they were to watch them in our final product, which is why we made sure that we utilized and took advantage of new technology and various software to make our ending title look more interesting and impressive.

Above shown is the ending title from our final movie. Notice that the font used is not simple and vengeance is purposely written in the “Chiller” font to imitate blood.