Yasmin Thompson's media group created a horror film opening called "The Perfect Picnic" for a coursework assignment. The film is a sequel that challenges genre conventions by combining romance and horror elements. Their two-minute opening fulfills the aims of building tension through its wooded setting and surprising twist on the romantic picnic title. Through filming the project, Yasmin learned important cinematography skills like match cuts, shot reverse shots, and editing techniques using movie software. Looking back, she recognizes the value of thorough planning revealed by difficulties with her preliminary task.

1. Media Evaluation
Yasmin Thompson

2. Introduction
• In my coursework film introduction, my group and I created a film opening called the ‘The
Perfect Picnic’. The genre for our film was horror aimed at 18-25 year olds. The film is a spin
off sequel to a well-known Cabin in the Woods horror film, and essentially it is a mad man ex-
boyfriend who stalks and kidnaps the main character, Rachel’s new boyfriend. For our
coursework task we had to film the opening 2 minutes of the film and we had spent several
months planning what we will include. Overall I think that our group did well with our filming
as we had to overcome filming issues but in the end we were very happy with the final
outcome of our opening two minutes because we fulfilled our aims.

3. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
• I think that our film opening does use , support and challenge forms and conventions of
real media products.
• Firstly our film is a horror movie and we have used a twist of two genres as it uses
romance and horror, therefore the storyline challenges forms and conventions of real
media products. This is because ‘The Perfect Picnic’ is a horror film but the storyline is of
a couple having a romantic picnic which suggests quite the opposite. The title also
challenges forms and conventions of real media products because most horror films
have quite obvious titles related to horror. An example of this would be the movie
Scream, as it is very obvious to the audience that the film is going to be related to horror.
Whereas our film is called ‘The Perfect Picnic’ which is quite paradoxical because it is not
perfect at all, which indicated to the audience that there is a twist in the movie and
foreshadows the future.

4. • In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
• Secondly the setting we chose for our film uses forms and conventions of real media
products because it is set in a field surrounded by wooded area, this builds on tension
as a wooded area is a typical location in horror films as they are dark and eerie.

5. • How does your media product represent particular social
groups?
• An age representation is used in our media product because the actors are 16 /17 and
are at that stage of life where they are growing up into adults.
• The representation of this group (teenagers) is positive because they are on a date and
they are having a picnic, which suggests that they are quite old fashioned or romantic.
This may confuse the audience because you don’t generally see teenagers portrayed
this way as they are known to be the opposite in that they are rebellious and have
youthful characteristics, displaying a sense of immaturity. As the new generation has
developed you don’t normally see people having traditional dating values, and then the
male character goes to the toilet leaving the female sat in the fields. As he goes to the
toilet she goes on her phone, which then shows a revert from the traditional values the
characters were showing and then portrays the female character as a typical teenager,
on her phone.

6. • What kind of media institution might distribute your media
product and why?
• I think that a filming production which produces other horror movies may be interested in my
media product because as the film is a sequel to another box office hit, this will then help the
movie to gain more credits and viewings because people want to watch the next film in the
sequel which makes it easier to sell to cinema companies and DVD producers as they will
have evidence of sales from a similar film and with it being a spin off this creates great
advertisement. I think the film should mainly be distributed in the UK and USA as it is a quite
a mainstream film and has features of stereotypical horror movies so people will be more
enthused to buy it.

7. Who would be the audience for your media product?
• The BBFC would rate our film as 18 which means it is only suited to adults. The reason why it
has a 18 rating is because it includes ‘very strong violence’ and scenes of ‘strong horror’.

8. How did you attract/address your audience?
• We attracted our target audience by using actors in the same age range as our target
audience (18-25) , and by using people with a similar social class and characteristics to the
target audience as it allows them to relate to the situation and characters, and really makes
them feel like they are apart of the movie.

9. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of
constructing this product?
• I found the process of completing my preliminary task very useful in teaching me some key
camera techniques. For example I took a shot reverse shot to illustrate to conversation
between two individuals. When doing this we broke the 180 degree angle rule, which caused
confusion for the audience when viewing it therefore we had to film this again making sure
that we stayed on the same line. I also leant how to do match on action , when doing this I
showed the match on action skill very well as we were able to capture the actor walking
through the door and holding the door knob at a good angle so that it made sense to the
audience and so it made the video look naturalistic, after we had filmed this we edited the
parts and cut certain parts of the scene so it looks like a constant action and matches the first
action shot which made it flow really well into the next scene without making it look
confusing. The preliminary task helped me to enable these skills in my opening 2 minutes
effectively.
• During the editing stages, I learnt how to use Serif movie plus X6 , which is an editing
software which we used to edit our opening two minutes. From this I learnt how to cut
certain shots and how to speed up or slow down shots, which enabled me to edit the video
to make it better. I also leant how to export music from YouTube onto the video, which made
our video much more effective and gave it more tension as we added scary horror music to
give it a more horror effect, as that was our chosen genre.

10. This is a shot from our preliminary task

11. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the
progression from it to the full product?
• From looking back on my preliminary task, I feel like I have learnt a lot because from the
preliminary task I learnt that you need to be organised with the filming to make sure it
goes right because we couldn’t proceed through with our original idea, to which we were
following my character through the school from a point of view shot, as we really admired
how this worked but we struggled to incorporate match on action, and it didn’t allow us
to play with any of the camera angles or edits. In addition we also didn’t get the transition
right when I was walking into the room and the shot reverse shot didn’t work as well as
we had to try and make it look like the character that was following me through the room
without me noticing that he was there. It didn’t work as it was clearly obvious that I could
tell that someone was in the room and had been following me so it didn’t look realistic
therefore that idea didn’t work and we had to use a more simple idea to get the video to
work making it look naturalistic.
• This helped me in the opening two minutes filming because we made sure that we were
more prepared and made sure that our plan was perfect before we went out and filmed.
Our story board helped the plan because we knew exactly what shots we needed to do
making the duration of the filming much quicker and made it ran much smoother.
•

12. Storyboard Pictures
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