The document discusses conventions in media production and how the student's media product used and developed conventions of the horror genre. It summarizes that the production stuck to conventions like establishing shots and non-diegetic music but developed conventions through edits to the BBFC certificate screen and titling. It kept conventions like a dark mise-en-scene to build suspense. The student aimed to stick to conventions to create a coherent horror piece rather than challenge conventions and risk a poor outcome.

1. Evaluation

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms
and conventions of real media products?
Using conventions in your production is important so the audience can identify what genre it is. If you
were to change these conventions too much the audience would begin to become confused by what
they are watching and this isn’t what you want. However, it can be important to develop some
conventions because certain conventions can become exhausted meaning an audience can find them
humorous and if a parody isn’t what you’re trying to produce then you want to change them slightly to
create something more original and new to an audience.
In our production we stuck to a lot of the conventions of a horror film, such as: having an establishing
shot, introducing the main character and having non-diegetic music. Another convention that we kept
is the bbfc certificate screen; we edited this so it suited our production. To keep the conventions of any
opening sequence we also had the title of the production and had the names of the team that created
the production. For these titles and credits we used a font that fitted with our genre because it’s meant
to look shaken as the audience should be after watching the film, we also made this typography white
because this fits with the paranormal theme that we are trying to create. Some of the films I analysed
when I was researching for this production had a red font which identified them with the horror genre
but this film isn’t a gore horror, so using a red font wouldn’t be necessary.
For the mise-en-scene in our production we tried to keep it fairly dark looking to make the audience
feel suspense that there could be something that they can’t see. Having a dark mise-en-scene is
common in opening sequences of horror films so we have kept this idea in our production.
The music we used for the opening sequence is quite slow which builds up suspense as the audience
can tell something is about to happen.
We decided when planning our production that it’s safer to stick to the conventions rather than try to
challenge them and it turn out badly, so this is why we decided to keep these conventions. Compared
to a real media production ours has quite a few similarities, as these are the conventions that we have
kept to.

3. How does your media product represent particular social
groups?
Our media production represents younger social groups, the protagonist is introduced
and she is meant to be about 19 so this is the only age group that is represented.
Because it is only the opening 2 minutes that is shown in our production there isn’t much
that we can show, but throughout the rest of the production this is also the only character
the audience will be introduced to properly.
A stereotypical view that people may have on a character that fits into this group could be
that they would be the typical victim in this situation, this has become a stereotype over
time because it has been seen many times before in other media productions. Quite
often this is viewed negatively due to the way that women have had to fight for so many
rights, this is why representing this group in this way could be a bad things. However, in
this way our production fits in with those views but later on in the film this character will
try to challenge this stereotype by trying to escape, although, in the end they do seem to
fit into the stereotypical views that she would be a victim, however unlike most situations
where there is then a hero to the victim there is no character that fills that role in our
production so in that way we have challenged the stereotypes that an audience would
expect. With this being the only character that is relevant throughout the whole film a lot
of other social groups are absent in our work, this could be presented to be a bad thing in
the way that there isn’t variety in who is seen on screen but only having one character is
a conscious choice that we made to create the feeling of isolation and there being no
escape as there is no one else there.

4. What kind of media institution might distribute your media
product and why?
I think the best distribution deal for our production would be to have a UK
theatrical release. A theatrical release is better as a non theatrical release has
to have a closed audience who cannot be charged for the viewing, also it
cannot be widely advertised for which gives a disadvantage as there won’t be
many people that are aware of the screening therefore meaning there could be
a reduced audience size.
In most cases the contract for a theatrical release will also include the rights to
release the production for home release, this could either be online or in a
physical DVD format and this would mean that our production has 2 release
dates.
I believe it would be best for our production to be released online and on a
physical DVD format. Online streaming is becoming more and more popular
recently but there are still people that prefer to own the physical DVD, this is
why I think we should release our production on both platforms because it will
bring in 2 different types of people.

5. Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience for our production is going to be people aged 15 and over, we
have made this even clear by making our production a 15 age rating so no one
younger will be able to see it as they aren’t our target audience.
We also chose to have a 15 rating as more often than not if a horror film is
made to be a 12 age rating then it isn’t as scary as we wanted ours to be so we
decided to keep in the aspects that we wanted to have and up the rating to a 15
rather than changing our original ideas and lowering the age to a 12. Although
having a 12 age rating would mean more people would be able to go and see
our film we didn’t think it would fit with what we wanted to do, and there is still a
larger audience that can see a 15 than if we made it an 18.
We have based our production on a niche audience – people who are fans of
horror films. Quite a lot of people, which we found from our audience research,
were around the age that we were basing our production on, as this is the sort
of age range that we found enjoyed watching horror films.
Also, we chose this age range because we fit into it so we can identify with
what they enjoy and what they don’t like as much so it helped having our own
opinions as well as the audience research that we did to be able to produce our
film.

6. How did you attract/address your audience?
To make sure we attracted our target audience to see our production,
we kept some of the conventions of horror films, because if they are
fans of this genre then they must like these conventions and by keeping
these in our own production we are going with what they like rather
than trying something different and it ending with people not liking it.
We also had to create a title that would attract people to come and see
our production and by making our title ‘The Disappearance’ it makes an
audience intrigued as to what has disappeared and what is going to
happen as a result of them disappearing.

7. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of
constructing this product?
I have learnt and developed a lot of technological skills whilst doing this production. Firstly, I have
developed my skills with a camera; I began knowing how to film and how to create some filming
techniques, such as different angles. Although I already knew these things, doing this production gave
me the opportunity to begin to practice using them, as I’d no previous experience before the
preliminary task. This has helped me gain confidence in using a camera, which means I can now feel
more confident in identifying the different camera techniques, as I would’ve done them myself.
Also, I have never had any experience with editing using Premiere Pro so I have learnt all of the skills
I’ve shown in the editing since beginning this production. Some of the things I can now do confidently
in Premiere Pro are: cutting clips together, adding music/sound effects, creating overlaying titles and
changing the lighting and sound volumes in particular clips. There is a lot more that I can learn on
Premiere Pro if I was producing a longer film but these are the things that I came across feeling that I
needed to know and I have had experienced them now, both in the preliminary task and in the main
production. I also know how to apply effects and transitions to clips on Premiere Pro, I have added
fade in and outs for audio and I am also aware of how I can now add these transitions, and other ones,
to video clips as well.
Another new technological skill I have learnt is how to create and look over surveys online, this was
important to me when I was doing my audience research so I could firstly get a survey for people to
answer and also I then had to look over all the feedback that I got from the survey and translate this
into writing for my written feedback of my audience research.
My wordpress skills have also developed since starting this production, I had some skills before such
as how to create a post and add images and video into it, these were all fairly simple things to do, I
also learnt how to add links into a blog post and connect this to my Pinterest board that I created.
Since starting this production I’ve learnt how to create drop down menus to make it easier to navigate
around my blog so I can easily look back at any information I need without having to scroll through lots
of blog posts.

8. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the
progression from it to the full product?
Compared to my preliminary production I spent more time on research and planning for my main production.
I went into more detail in each planning task and this helped me when it came to filming. Also, the tasks for
the planning of our production were split between different people in the group so this gave us the
opportunity to give certain tasks to people who were good at a particular thing, eg. someone who could draw
well could make the storyboard. In addition, I didn’t do much research for my preliminary task because the
purpose of it was to practice the techniques ready for my main production, doing research helped me to
create a production I know will interest people and also how to create it because I looked into the
conventions of other horror films so this helped to give me some ideas. This also helped me to gain
knowledge about how media works and particular things about filming such as distribution that I otherwise
wouldn’t have known.
Whilst doing my preliminary production I was new to working with a camera for filming and the different
techniques I could use so I had the chance to get used to them, by the time it came to my main production I
could focus on making sure these things were of good standard. For example, in my preliminary task I didn’t
think too much about the framing of my work whereas in my main production I thought more about the
framing; where things were and whereabouts they were going to happen. Another thing I thought more about
this time was the range of shot types and camera movements – in my preliminary task I didn’t think about
these things but now I had the chance to experiment more. Filming on location meant I could work on things
such as panning, long shots and handheld camera movement because there was more availability to use
these techniques. I also got to do establishing shots because we were filming at a particular location so we
had to show the audience the area. I didn’t use establishing shots in my preliminary production because it
was a short bit of footage where I was in a one room location so it was unnecessary for me to include an
establishing shot.
Furthermore, I got the chance to develop my editing skills, I had to cut more clips together and had to learn
how to overlay titles as in my preliminary production I added a plain title at the end as this was easy for my
first time using Premiere Pro. Also, I added more music and sound effects this time so got to use these more
and because I needed to add some transitions to these things I got the chance to experiment with the
different types of transitions and effects more.

9. In Conclusion…
I think overall my project went well. I had to overcome many problems such as the
conflicting ideas of what to base our production on within the group and also things such
as how to do particular things on Premiere Pro.
Issues to do with editing and wordpress I had to overcome by looking online to try and
tutorials on how to do things, for example add menus to my blog and also how to add
titles.
Another issue that I had to overcome was things within our group, we had to overcome
the issue of how to share work once we had posted it online, when doing this I made sure
to give credit to whoever had created a post at the end.
I think the filming went well overall because we managed to find a location that really
fitted our idea for our production. Also, I think the editing went well because this is what
helped to really make our production become a horror with the music and the font.
My project could’ve been better if I had been able to get out and film more than twice
because then we could’ve tried different angles and had multiple shots so we could
choose which one was the best one for our production.
Another way my project could’ve been improved was if we completed all of the planning
for our production quicker than we did so we would then be able to start filming earlier
which would’ve given us the time to shoot multiple times as I had previously hoped.