1. E V A L U A T I O N
of
C R Y S T A L L I NE
By Rosie Wishart

2. C R Y S T A L L I NE
In my media product, the opening sequence of a film. I have aimed for
the audience to be able to establish the genre of the film within the two
minutes shown. As the genre of my film is a psychological thriller, I
researched into generic conventions within films for this genre,to then
decide how I would use/develop or challenge them in my media product.
Looking at the forms and
conventions used in similar genre
films.
Q1 - in what ways does
your Media product use,
develop or challenge
forms and conventions of
real media products?
CONVENTIONS - for
example, a Thriller film you
would normally find that it
follows certain 'conventions'
such as suspense, climax
etc.

3. C R Y S T A L L I NE
Looking at the forms and
conventions used in similar genre
films.
Q1 - in what ways does
your Media product use,
develop or challenge
forms and conventions of
real media products?
I found that the setting played a part of
the audience being able to establish the
genre and also that it is a important
convention used in any horror/thriller
piece.
An example of this was
Insomnia directed by Christopher
Nolan, the opening shows you a birds
eye view of snowy mountains, making it
seem quite, alone and along with the
music extremely creepy allowing the
audience to identify the genre quickly
Setting
Use
Using the idea of having setting as a
main signifier, we used the woods for
our setting as typically horror/thriller
films are linked with woods.

4. C R Y S T A L L I NE
Looking at the forms and
conventions used in similar genre
films.
Q1 - in what ways does
your Media product use,
develop or challenge
forms and conventions of
real media products?
Sound
Develop
Instead of having one sound/tune play
throughout, we chose to have sound as a
signifier within itself having a change of
sound with a change of person/mood/place.
Another important convention I found was
sound/music a prime example of this is Hard
Candy, directed by David Slade. The music used in
the opening is of a dainty piano playing quite a
innocent tune yet it sounds as if it has a dark twist
on it. The opening was extremely empty and no
other conventions were of immediate use only
music, and it was still clear what the genre of
the film was, proving music is of great use to
establish the genre, I chose to develop this.

5. C R Y S T A L L I NE
Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill was one of the films that we looked into, the convention used in the
opening of the film is character. As the scene opens with a black screen and the diegetic sound of a
woman breathing heavily, in black and white, as the woman is the only person we see, we
immediately know she is themain character, making the audience wonder what happened to her and
wanting to know more I chose to develop and use this convention. The convention of character was
hard to develop and use in my media product because we had one actress, one character but with
two different personalities and in order to show both sides clearly in the media product we
developed the idea of costume, as in Kill Bill she is wearing a wedding dress we, the audience know
that it is something to do with a wedding so we chose to develop this idea and show the different
sides of our character through costume. (As shown on the next slide).
Looking at the forms and
conventions used in similar genre
films.
Q1 - in what ways does
your Media product use,
develop or challenge
forms and conventions of
real media products?

6. C R Y S T A L L I NE
Looking at the forms and
conventions used in similar genre
films.
Q1 - in what ways does
your Media product use,
develop or challenge
forms and conventions of
real media products?
Character
Develop/Use
We used the idea of having our main character at
the beginning of the film opening, but we challenged
it by having our character have a greater meaning
by what she was wearing symbolising personality.
As our character was shown as two along with
music we wanted to make it clear for the audience
when it had changed from one side to the other we
did this through costume as well
This is the innocent side of our
Character Amanda, in contrast to the
twisted side she is wearing lighter
clothes in stead of all black.
In this picture the
costume we chose
was all black to
show the dark side
of Amanda’s
personality.

7. C R Y S T A L L I NE
Q2 - How does your media
product represent
particular social groups?
In my media product, there is only young woman. Typically in
thriller/horror films, females are shown as hypersexual damsels in
distress who are usually murdered within the first five minutes.
We don’t show a distinct representation of a particular social group,
but we do show age in negative way due to her insanity caused
from drugs.
We represent our characters as middle class educated young
women you can tell this by their accent when they talk, and also
the mise en scene for example one of our scenes are set at a
school.

8. C R Y S T A L L I NE
Q3 - What kind of Media
Institution might distribute
your Media Product and
Why?
The distribution company I used for my film is
Momentum Pictures.
Why I chose Momentum
Pictures.
Momentum Pictures is one of the leading
independent motion picture distributors in the UK
and Ireland. Extremely well known and popular.
Has been the
distribution company
for films with similar
genre e.g. The
Crazies and
Insidious.
Have also been the
distribution company for films
with a similar age group e.g.
The Woman in Black and The
Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
We used Hammer Films as
our production company and
Momentum and Hammer
have got a few films together
of the same genre.
In 2011 won 8 baftas, still
being used and doing well .

9. C R Y S T A L L I NE
Q3 - What kind of Media
Institution might distribute
your Media Product and
Why?
The distribution company I used for my film is
Momentum Pictures.
What is a
distribution
company?
• A company/individual responsible for the marketing of the
film, can set the realease date also the method which the
film will be available by i.e. directly to the public either
theatrically or for home viewing on DVD etc.
How would my film
be available for
viewing and why?
• The platform my film would be distributed on would be a
cinema, then DVD because from the research I did I
found that 13 out of 20 people I asked would watch it at
the cinema first/prefer to watch it at the cinema.

10. C R Y S T A L L I NE
Q3 - What kind of Media
Institution might distribute
your Media Product and
Why?
The distribution company I used for my film is
Momentum Pictures.
Multiplex or Art
House Movie?
• Art house movies are shown to a niche market (a specialised audience to
a specific audience) instead of a mass scale audience. A certain degree of
knowledge is needed to be able to appreciate or understand a art house
movie and they are normally shown a few times in specialty theatres. They
say they are the extreme opposite of a blockbuster movie, as they do not
strive to entertain, as the audience should strive to understand such movies.
Our media product is more likely to be shown at local multiplex's where its
cheap for young people and even though our target audience is young adults
we want it to be appealing and open for a mass scale audience. Also the
knowledge required to watch a art house movie is unlikely to be found in a
young adult, our media product in my opinion is a blockbuster and is there to
entertain and the only strive within our media product is to be a mainstream
entertaining appealing blockbuster.

11. C R Y S T A L L I NE
Q4 - who would the
audience for your media
product?
Our target audience for our media product is young
adults/teenagers. The age certificate for our film is
15 as films under this age category according to the BBFC
(The British Board of Film Classification) claim it can contain
'adult themes, hard drugs, strong language, strong violence
and strong sex references and nudity without graphic detail
and sexual activity may be portrayed but without any strong
detail. Sexual violence may be shown if discreet and justified
by context.' This is the perfect age for our film because of the
drugs, there would be swearing in it and also we have the
theme of rape in it so there would we sex references and
possibly discreet sexual violence.
The genre of our film is a psychological thriller about a young
girl of 16. To make our film more appealing we took all
conventions that would be appealing to our target of young
demographic. Another reason this is our target audience is

12. C R Y S T A L L I NE
Q4 - who would the
audience for your media
product?
Firstly lifestyle, our media product is about a young woman who gets too involved
with all the wrong things i.e. parties, drugs and older boys three of which are all
parts of a teenage girls lifestyle some vary and some more than others. To appeal to
our target audience and to make sure that the part of the lifestyle of our character is
shown we used fashion and setting, using clothes that are deemed fashionable
today appeals to our target audience and having part of it set at a school helps them
to be able to relate to our character age wise as well as the lifestyle of attending
sixth form with all the distractions. We also have knife shown in our piece and as
young knife crime is a issue today in society, for audience it would emphasis the
age group involved.
The music used throughout our piece created on garage band is a mix of trance,
rock, bass and percussion all of which are popular in our target audience age group.
We chose to use all the different types of music to interest our audience and to make
it more interesting and appeal to a wider group instead of having none or one piece
of music throughout.

13. C R Y S T A L L I NE
Q4 – who would the
audience for your product
be?
When researching into similar films, we looked at the target audience
of each and what audience enjoys them the most. Donnie Darko by
Richard Kelly is about A troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a
large bunny rabbit that manipulates him to commit a series of crimes,
after narrowly escaping a bizarre accident. The film is rated 15
and after doing some research I found that 16 people that I asked
had watched it and 8 of them said its in there top three favorite
movies so I decided to do some online research into reviews, one girl
aged 15 said 'this movie was thought-provoking, unique, and mind-
bending’ which is the exact reaction we want from our media product
so we made sure we made ours similar to Donnie Darko.

14. C R Y S T A L L I NE
Question 5 - how did
you attract/address your
audience?
In our media product as explained in previous slides, we used
a few conventions to attract and address our audience
for example the age of our character, using a character that is
roughly the same age as our target audience appeals to the
audience and attracts them as they can relate to some on the
lifestyle of the character and would want to see how someone
the same age is shown and represented and how they live
their life. Another way we do this I music as I said in question 4
we used a range of different types of music all of which are
popular with the target audience we found out in research
which appeals and attracts the audience.

15. C R Y S T A L L I NE
Question 7 –Looking back at the preliminary
task, what do you feel you have learnt from it
to the full product?
Looking back at all the work I have done in the process of creating
my full product, I have learnt many skills. When making my film
opening I used many of skills I had learnt in the process to make
my film the best it could possibly be, due to the software I had
learnt to use I was able to make my full product look professional
and able to get rid of any shots that were not needed making it run
smoothly.
When I did the continuity exercise I learnt about the 360 degree
rule, which taught me I had to make a line to make sure that my
film was continuous and to further make it run smoothly.