This document summarizes what the student has learned from constructing their media product. They discuss learning about color treatment and editing techniques in Premiere Pro. They also learned that an expensive camera is not necessary for a high quality product. Comparing their preliminary task to the full product, the student learned how to properly add audio, use a tripod, and refine the editing process. Overall, they gained valuable experience with various production and post-production skills.

3. IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT
USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND
CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?
For the most part our opening does not challenge the forms and conventions of a
horror, it uses features such as jump cuts, settings in a forest, screaming and eerie
music in the background with use of non diegetic sound. However it can be seen to
challenge conventions as we have an all female cast, this goes against the norms
of media products. The male gaze as identified by Laura Mulvey suggests that
media products are structured around a masculine viewer, it shows women from a
males perspective and will often portray male beliefs and attitudes. Our media
product, however, sees the female characters through the eyes of another female
and the storyline itself would move away from any masculine views. Therefore it
challenges the unwritten rules of most media products, this could be a selling point
for a product and make it stand out from the other media products available.

4. HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT
PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?
When looking at the Traditional Segmentation Model I would say that our
media product falls under the C1 classification and below. This classification
is labelled as lower middle class with people in this classification likely to
have occupations such as administrative or professional roles. The reason I
did not put the product in B/A category is because I don’t think people in the
middle to upper classes would find our product of any interest to them, they
can be assumed to live busy lives and so would not have the time to watch
our product especially as it has no real educational benefit. People who fall
into the C1 category would be more likely to fall into our target audience as
they can be assumed to have more of a part time job, or at least have more
time for leisure activities, and so would be more willing to watch a media
product for entertainment value. I therefore think that our product is aimed
towards the lower to working class social group who adhere to the
Hypodermic Needle Model in which audiences are influenced by media and
are less likely to challenge what is being sold to them.

5. WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION MIGHT
DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?
I would suggest that our media product is distributed on a platform such as Netflix
rather than into cinemas. The reason for this is that our film has been made by an
independent company, this means that it is unlikely to make much profit if we
were to release it into cinemas. A compromise for this may be to release it at a
film festival local to the UK such as Cambridge Film Festival, this way our product
is seen by many but is known to be made by an independent company who are
still making their way up within media production. Once shown at a film festival it
may be necessary to move it on to Netflix if feedback is positive and we know that
lots of people would be willing to pay to see it.

6. WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR
MEDIA PRODUCT?
When looking at Young and Rubicams cross cultural consumer characterisation
model I would say that our media product would be targeted at ‘The struggler’,
‘The Aspirer’ and ‘The Explorer’. The struggler would be suited for our product as
they like to watch films which are very different to their everyday life, our film
includes supernatural themes and so is very unique and will take the audience
away from the comfort of their mundane life. The Aspirer would want to watch our
media product as they enjoy fashionable, popular things and as supernatural
films are currently popular, for example American Horror Story and The
Conjuring, they would be more than willing to watch our media product as it is
widely popular throughout current society. The explorer characters are all about
discovering new things, as our film is an independent production that not many
people would have heard of they would enjoy watching our film.

7. HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/ADDRESS YOUR
AUDIENCE?
Our target audience is mainly women aged between 15-30 who are lower-
working class. Therefore we tried to make our film opening as stereotypically
‘girly’ as we could, we did this by casting females only and by making the plot
something that would attract more to females than it would to males. However
we did not want to move away from the horror genre and so we edited the
footage to look as dark an eerie as we could with the use of jump cuts to add to
the suspension and eerie feel of the product. As the age rating for our film was
a 15 we could not include any sadistic or sexualised threat, we planned to
focus just on the psychological thrill aspect of a horror, keeping the audience
guessing what will happen next, rather than including blood and guts, other
physical mise-en-scene within the horror genre. We wanted to keep it as
realistic as possible whilst still using supernatural themes so as audience
members could still relate to the characters.

8. WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT
TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS OF
CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?
Within my role of editor I learnt a lot about the use of colour treatment within the
editing programme Premiere Pro. As shown below I used the colour wheel to
change the aesthetic of the final product, I chose to make it more blue to darken
the scene and connote a sense of the unknown. I also learnt different techniques
such as how to add moving credits into scenes and how to use the feather tool to
accentuate certain parts of the scene more than others. After looking at different
independent films I have learnt that an expensive camera is not the one and only
way that you can get a good quality final product. For example, the film
‘Tangerine’ which was filmed using just an Iphone has been shown at the sun
dance film festival. This proved that we could create a media product which was
of the same quality as a major film production company could make without
having a budget of thousands of pounds.

9. LOOKING BACK AT YOUR PRELIMINARY TASK,
WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE LEARNT IN THE
PROGRESSION FROM IT TO THE FULL
PRODUCT?
When looking back at our preliminary task I can see that we have come a long way, the first thing I have
learnt is how to place audio on top of video footage. In the preliminary task we used the audio that the
camera picked up, this made it sound fuzzy and just in general was not of good quality, it also picked up
surrounding sounds. In our main task, although we used non diegetic sound we did add diegetic sounds
such as panting over the video with the use of a boom in a studio, after shooting. I have also learnt how to
use the tripod to steady footage, although we did use a tripod in the preliminary task the footage was still
shaky and uneven making it uncomfortable to watch. In the main task we ensured the foundations that our
tripod was on were even and we secured the camera into place, we never shot a scene free hand as we
knew this would make the footage inconsistent. I personally have learnt the most about editing, although I
did not edit the preliminary task, as the director I over looked the process. Looking back at our preliminary
task it is obvious that the editing process was not completed to the best it could have been, you can see
this as some of our scenes have not been cropped fully and so the scenes jump awkwardly from one to the
next. In our main task however I have spent many hours on the editing process and have sat down with the
rest of the team, overlooked by the director, to ensure that our media product is to a standard that could be
shown at film festivals.