This document summarizes Fern Disney's evaluation of their media product "Dolls Domain". Some key points:
1) The product develops conventions of real horror media by featuring scary female characters and child-like elements like dolls, playing into stereotypes.
2) G.E.A.R.S (Gender, ethnicity, Age, Religion, Socio-economic) were considered to create an inclusive product without focusing on one group.
3) The intended audience is teenagers and horror fans aged 15+, as younger viewers may find it distressing.
4) Lessons were learned about editing techniques like manipulating frames and adding filters to achieve the desired atmosphere.
2. In what ways does your media
product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media
products?
• We develop forms of real media products by having scary women in our
media text about child-like things for example dolls and playing with
dollhouses and toys. This develops real media products because from our
research of films such as Annabelle, dead silence and the women in black,
the main character (protagonist) is male and the evil character
(antagonist) is female. As this is also present in our media text it suggests
we help develop this stereotypical view of childlike factors being creepy
and/or scary .
3. G.E.A.R.S… Gender, ethnicity, Age
• When forming our ideas, it was very important to keep in mind a variety of
different groups.
• G.E.A.R.S helped us follow a guideline. For example, the gender we chose
was unisex, due to horror not being exclusive to one gender, it would be very
hard to specify a horror media product which was on,y for say girls. However
from on perspective, someone may say that our product it actually for the
female gender due to the use of dolls- stereotypically playing by young girls.
Although we as a group wouldn't specify a certain gender
• Much like gender, the ethnicity is purely varied. Any one who is a fan of
horror movies would be able to watch this.
• For age, as seen on our BBFC the guided age was 15+ this is because
younger ages may find it distressing as it is a horror, we also used child toys
which may psychology harm younger viewers.
4. Who would be the audience for your
media product?
• Through the use of a teenage as our main featured
character in this media product. The main age for
viewing would be around teenagers. However due to
this being a horror film it would be appropriate for only
teenagers aged 15 and up. Also those aged older who
are fans of these types of horrors would also be suitable
for our media product.
5. G.E.A.R.S religion/nationality
• As we didn't include any religion or nationality reference with in our
product, it shows we didn't want to specify any given group.
• If we wanted to, we could have taken aspects of films such as The Conjuring
to include a given religion. For in example in this film they specify on the
Christianity religion. By trying to get rid of the ' evil' within the wife/ mother
by saying prays and reading out of the Bible.
• However, even though it is not clear, we did actually use a quiet pray. As
part of our build of sound, we used one of our group to whisper and one part
we recorded a pray.
6. G.E.A.R.S Socio-economic
There isn't a particular class for our genre, we intend to create our production for those who are
fans of horror, not based on their class. Although I do believe it is mainly E-C1- those above may
choose to watch it. However it is best suited for these social groups because our main character of
our product is a 16/17 (our age) which puts her in class E class in the first place because we don't
earn enough money to live off, we are students. Therefore it is likely that people in social grade E
could easily identify with our film, increasing the chances of the lower social grades watching it.
7. How does your media product
represent particular social groups?
• Through the use of our antagonist, I would say our media
product represents the social group of the mainstream, going
from the social grade of E (those of lowest level) to about social
grade C1 (the lower middle class).
9. Young and Rubicam's 4Cs model
For our media product, I think it is most suited to the
'mainstream' cultural consumer. This is because our production
is a horror film which suits the characteristics of people who live
in the world of the domestic and everyday. A daily routine is
fundamental to the way they live their lives- supernatural
horrors have become more popular therefore with this growing
popularity the mainstream audiences may follow the crowd-
creating a snowball effect- picking up new viewers for our media
product, for example those who discover insidious, may then
venture into films such as the conjuring or sinister or
Annabelle.
10. What kind of media institution might
distribute your media product and
why?
• I think the media institute which would distribute our media
product is BBC films. This is because films they have already
distributed before hand are ones such as Woman In Black. The
reason I believe this goes with our film is because The Woman
In Black film opens in a similar way to ours, with the child
innocence manipulated to be creepy.
11. How did you attract/ address your
audience?
• Before we began to film I wrote up a variety of different
questions to ask our focus group (this is a video in which I
have uploaded to YouTube linked in my blog) to find out
how they would feel about our media product and give
their thoughts of variety of different horror based
questions, for example, whether our focus group (all aged
between 16-17) preferred jumpy horror films or
psychological. Therefore our answers gathered were
addressed in the creating of our media product. A way in
which we address our product was by playing the tune
lots in class. May people began humming it and were
further intrigued to what we were actually creating.
Therefore we attracted our audience by releasing small
teasers to make them want to watch it.
12. • Another way in which we attracted our
audience was by making a Twitter an
Instagram account.
• With Instagram having over 300 million
users, it meant we were able to follow as
many similar account and post 'teasers' to
form more publicity.
• Twitter has 310 million monthly users.
Twitter can used for a variety of things.
This has meant we have been able to
follow all the different account to do with
production of different media products.
How did you attract/ address your
audience?
13. What have you learnt about
technologies from the process of
constructing this product?
• In a small section of our media product we printed our
a variety of different images and physically edited
them, then filming them in the Forrest. However in our
final product, we only ended up using 1 of the frames
because they other ones ruined the atmosphere built
up. This shows what I have learnt about the
technologies of photoshop, I had to upload the image,
changing the size and then further printing it. I was
also the editor of the whole product therefore I learnt
about premier.
14. Looking back at your preliminary task,
what do you feel you have learnt in the
progression from it to the full product?
• Comparing my editing with the preliminary task and
the primary task of Dolls Domain, there is a massive
jump of progression which I can personally see. For
example I learnt different techniques to manipulate my
frames, for example learning how to use a vignette
around them. I also learnt how to add something called
'noise' as a type of filter to make it looks like an old
media piece. Additionally, I learnt how to put in key
frames, this enabled me to change factors of my work,
such as slowly zooming in or changing the volume mid
clip. A another factor I learnt how to do is to make
written text roll upwards on the screen.
15. Horror time line
One of the task I done was a
horror timeline, this was key in
the preparing for the media
product. This is because it
shows how our work resembles
2010- and later films in
comparison to the first ever
horror films of Frankenstein.
Films created in 2010 was
insidious and then Annabelle
was made in 2014 which also
resembles our media product.
16. Overall…
• Overall looking at the final cut of Dolls Domain, I am
rather proud of it, I believe it creates and forms the
idea which I originally planned for it, the theme of the
creepy human clockwork doll works in creating that
creepy tension, people are further intrigued and want
to watch the rest- for this I would say it is a success.
However, the thing I would change for this media
product is at the end I put a rolling set of credits to
show my progression, although I do not think it works
very well and don't really like it, I think due to the
credits already being present in the media on the
chalkboard, it isn't really that necessary to be there,
except it is a good example of my progression.