The document summarizes the production process and outcomes of a student film opening. It discusses conventions used, social representations portrayed, target audiences, and the use of technology. Feedback from audience research highlighted positives like camerawork and atmosphere, but also negatives like cheap special effects and lack of suspense. Overall, the students feel the opening was a good effort given time constraints and will provide valuable experience for future projects.

1. AS Media EvaluationNathan Russell, Will Pilkington and Jacob Caria-Preen

2. ConventionsAs far as the text featured is concerned, this is conventional as it appears in virtually all film openings but the style was something unique to our opening. With a demon being a rather conventional feature we decided to think outside the box and take a passage from the New Testament and use this as the foundation for our opening. Instead of featuring a conventional ‘back story’ we decided to give as little away as possible in order to keep the audience shrouded in mystery.

3. Keeping It Conventional In addition to this we felt that encompassing some elements such as a chase scene and a demon would allow us to play it safe as risks cannot afford to be taken with what would be a low budget film. These conventions were impacted somewhat with a change from actress to actor and perhaps this worked out for the best as this avoided further conventions and clichés.In the end, I feel we have the right balance of conventions in order to retain some originality whilst adhering to the typical conventions somewhat.

4. Social RepresentationThe two main characters within our opening bring certain stereotypes and we have tried to accommodate these as well as go some way to quelling them. We felt by doing this it would allow the audience to not only relate to our characters but the sense of mystery that is imperative to the horror genre would remain.Examples of this include ‘the boy’ using some coarse language and ‘the demon’ wearing a hooded top and being teenagers ourselves only made this easier.

5. The Media’s Stereotypes And A Change Of PlanOriginally, ‘the demon’ was supposed to be a girl but a male actor took their place and this worked out better than we first thought.Firstly, it allowed our opening to steer further away from any clichés and idea was not disrupted and in reality a last minute change like this helped us focus.I would say that the representation in our film is halfway between the media’s stereotypes and depicting teenagers as ‘good’, allowing for another dimension of relation from our audience.

6. Distribution ‘Momentum Pictures’ seems an ideal choice for an institution suitable to distribute our film as they release predominately British films and have distributed films such as ‘Dear John’ and ‘Law Abiding Citizen’. Having such a well known institution would evidently benefit such a film but ‘Lions Gate Entertainment’ would be another suitable candidate as it has distributed the ‘Saw’ series. Evidently, these are only two of many institutions but we feel after analysing the situations that these would be the most suitable to distribute our film.

7. Our Target AudienceThe target audience for our media product would be young adults aged 18 to 25 who are in the social demographic groups of C1 to E.Our film would predominately appeal to males due to its graphic nature and another films that may also interest the audience may include ‘Dawn Of The Dead’ and ‘Cloverfield’. We also undertook audience research prior to, and after, completing our film opening in order to gauge what we needed to do and what in the end could’ve been done better.

8. Audience Research Feedback We received a great deal of feedback, both positive and negative, and we are determined to learn from this in order to make future projects successful.Some of the positive feedback included the usage of camerawork as well as the setting and the atmosphere created which is valuable feedback considering it is a horror film.Some of the negative feedback revolved around the slight cheapness of the special effects and the lack of suspense which is something we will take on board and try to use as beneficially as possible.

9. Attracting Our AudienceFrom our research we found that not as many people enjoyed or watched horror films as we thought so we had to do some adapting in order to cater for such an audience.We took a lot of care in choosing our setting and the sounds used as this is imperative to a successful horror film and this is something we perhaps wouldn’t have addressed prior to said research. Our characters were also of vital importance in attracting our audience and being in the middle of the stereotype spectrum allows the audience to relate whilst enjoying our film.

10. The Use Of TechnologyThe usage of two different software packages ‘Final Cut Express’ and ‘Adobe After Effects’ were crucial in determining the quality of our end product. Our group had varying levels of experience in regard to the former, but we had no experience with using After Effects and I feel this is something we catered for very well considering this fact.Using advanced techniques such as green-screening gave our end product an extra dimension although the use of technology cannot solely be classified as software packages.

11. Our Experiences Blogging was also something we had varying levels of experience with and now we have utilised and realised the potential of such an expansive platform this will be something to benefit us in future projects.Even something as basic as using a camera to film the footage is something that we have all now had further experience with and definitely something that we acknowledge cannot be taken for granted. All in all, the usage of technology is something that can make or break a film and I feel that it has given our opening the edge and it is something we have benefitted from and can use in the future.

12. Our Preliminary TaskThere are some noticeable flaws in regard to our preliminary task but we have learnt from these and distractions were a major problem so focus is what was needed in regard to our opening.Furthermore, there wasn’t such a variety of shot types within the preliminary task and this is something we have addressed in order to gauge the interest of the audience. Finally, more care was taken with our final product and in reality every mistake made with our preliminary is a beneficial one due to the effect is has had on our opening as a whole.

13. After EffectsThis is the project area where all files that have been used are stored for ease of use. This allows a project to be organised. This is the composition are where all files combine and many effects and alterations can be used from here. This is one access to the usage of effects and the panels can be resized in order to create a personalised workspace. These options can alter the views of the rendering in order to edit in the most sufficient manner.

14. ChangesWe changed our male actor due to commitments and ‘the demon’ was supposed to be female to start with.We had many locations to choose from and chose Beddington Park for our final choice. The attire for the characters was not determined beforehand and luckily things turned out successfully in the end. There were many changes from the script and the screenplay and these were successful and we catered for them in order to have the best end product possible.

15. ConclusionsWe feel that considering the time that we had to film and edit our opening it was a good effort but with more time it would be of a much better standard.This opening will give us enough experience to take forward to A2 and allow us to get the best grade possible not only this year but overall. We have received feedback that is both positive and negative and we agree with every comment made and we are pleased to have seen an idea develop into such a successful final product.