The document discusses how the media group's horror film product uses conventions from real horror films like Paranormal Activity. They chose simple costumes, props, and camera shots to focus on the story. Their film uses common horror elements like strange noises, doors closing by themselves, and a white flash at the end. They aimed to attract a teenage audience by including scary and suspenseful moments that would thrill them. Through making this film, the group learned new technologies like video editing software and how to use a camera effectively. They felt they improved in skills and organization from their preliminary task to the final product.

1. Nu Vibe
Media Evaluation AS
Left Behind

2. In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or
Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products?
When planning production of our media product, we all decided that we'd like to do a horror/thriller/suspense film. To
help us with our ideas and give us insight to common conventions of this genre of film, we researched films such as
Paranormal Activity and Scary Movie. We decided we would base our film more-so on Paranormal Activity. Paranormal
Activity included conventions of a ghost story with strange noises and doors opening and closing by itself, hence why
we decided to include a shot which included the door closing by itself, we used this so the audience would feel familiar
with this and know what genre of film it was from almost the beginning as it is not clear from the titles and the sound
of the telephone ringing, which we edited in. We edited in music which also suggests the genre of the film, with
ambience, cinematic boom and ghostly whispers, this added to the tension for the audience. We named our film 'Left
Behind' as we believe it adds mystery and gives slight indication to a storyline, we placed the name on a black
background with a plain white font to keep it simplistic as the name pretty much suggests everything the audience
needs to know without excessive graphics and fancy fonts. We decided to film at Emma's house, a plain house which
again, the audience would feel familiar with and wouldn't quite expect ghostly goings on, we used normal camera
shots on a middle angle and framed it so you could see everything we intended you to see in the frame, such as the
door closing by itself. We took photos of this location and got somebody to model out our animatic to test the
location and ensure it was suitable, which we decided it was. Our characters costume the whole way through was
simply a towel wrapped around her body, this was to signify that she had been in the shower and with what's going
on, didn't really have time to get changed. For props, we used a mobile phone to set the time period, we only shot that
clip once and didn't touch the phone once we had set it down to achieve continuity. Our film didn't really rely on
costume and props to convey the genre and storyline as much as other conventions did. We went for fairly simple
camera shots, we didn't see the need for difficult camera shots and felt we could achieve just as good a desired effect
with simplistic camera shots. The first shot is of her in the shower, this introduces her as a normal girl going about
normal business who is unexpectant of what happens in our film. We didn't touch or move anything in the bathroom
which didn't need to be touched and we didn't show much of the weather through the window, plus our film was all
shot within a couple of hours on the same day and this seriously helped us achieve continuity. We didn't use much of a
narrative and there is minimal dialogue, this is because there is more action and dialogue didn't seem completely
necessary. At the end of the film, we used a white flash out to signify ghostly goings on, we also found this to be a
common convention in many films to fade out and this signifies the end of something.

3. How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social
Groups?
We were very aware that our task was to film the first two minutes of a film
so we didn't see the need for so much character development at the
particular moment. However, from our film, you can see that she is just a
normal girl, having a shower, going about her business and talking to her
family and so far, this is the kind of character most people can relate to.
We didn't stereotype her as anything but we did choose a female
character as they are shown as more vulnerable in films such as our own
and we feel more empathy and sympathy for a female character. It is
also more typical of women to behave scared the way she does and if
we'd had a man, who have a habit in films of not showing their fear and
acting 'hard', the audience would have found it harder to relate to him
and we definitely wanted the audience to relate to our character as this
increases tension.

4. What Kind of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Media
Product and Why?
Our film clip would be suitable for distribution through the TV but possibly after
the watershed due to the genre ‘horror’ but it could also be distributed via
YouTube which would be cost effective and would reach a wide target
audience. Our film would be relevant and suitable to be a low budget film but
distributed by a high end distributor as it could be a blockbuster due to the
attention to detail both in the planning and our clip. We have chosen these
methods of distribution to try and reach a large but age targeted audience as
YouTube is run from a search engine and therefore the audience chooses
what they watch and on TV after the watershed it targets the older audience.
We decided on our name of which we made our own up from the storyboard
and genre ‘left behind’ refers to a ghost or demon being left in a house and
taunting the character in the clip.

5. Who Would be The Audience for Your Media Product?
The media that we have been producing as a team since September is specifically aimed towards 16+. The
Film is not biased to one gender, both can watch, however the main character is a female therefore
may mean more girls watch it than boys. At the beginning of the film, it may seam a little unclear to the
audience of what is going on as she is in the shower but then the door slams so you immediately
understand that it is supernatural and going to be a horror. I don’t believe that it is so scary, it needs to
be an 18+ as it shows no sexual, naked scenes; also does not include bad language. Even at the
beginning of the year we all agreed that is would be a horror as we all shared the same ideas and
thought we would get together as a group to pursue this and share ideas with one another, but we
decided that we didn’t want it to be to much of a horror that 16’s couldn’t watch it. Due to a majority
of us still being 16 we thought this was perfect. We believe that the BBFC would certificate this as a 16+
rated film. Our audience was teenagers; we choose this specific group to us being teenagers our selves
and it would be hard to make a film to an older younger audience that we didn’t fully understand. I
think that there are parts of our film that would effect the audience for example when the girl was
dragged down the stairs and when their was a bloody hand print this would effect the audience
making them aware that it is going to be a horror it would make them feel on edge also. The film, we
believe is not explicit, but implicit. We don’t believe that it is explicit due to there not being any violent
or sexual scenes. When our film was put on trial, it went very well. The audience were 16+ and they
enjoyed the film it went smoothly and then found some bits effective more than others such as the
hand print and the dragging they were intrigued on how we managed to show it on the camera. There
is a kind of stereotype with in out film for example we Goths and Very outgoing teenagers are more
likely to watch this than girly girls that like to watch Sex and the City or something along those lines.
This stereotype fits in with the people we know, the people in our group are very out going and one of
which, is a Goth, therefore we already have insight on what we want to watch and what they will want
to watch.

6. How Did You Attract/Address Your Audience?
We know teenagers like being scared and films that make them jump. So for our film we
wanted to include the following conventions: A make-you-jump, scary, the
unexpected, supernatural and scary music
We did this in the 1 minute preview that we did. There we parts that made you jump,
things that’s go bump in the night and things moving when nobody was there. We
wanted to have suspense in it as well. All of these together are, what we feel,
teenagers enjoy. Our target audience will most likely be over be 15. Teenagers who
go out and have fun with their friends in large groups tend to enjoy the thrill of being
scared. We tried to attract a teenage based audience; we did this because we are
teenagers and it would be hard to appeal to a audience we didn’t fully understand. In
our first scene we had a protagonist, in her twenties, in the shower and we hear her
phone ring, It was a purple blackberry, and since Blackberry is a common brand of
phone among teenagers, simply seeing the blackberry would engage the audience,
once they’re engaged in the scene, we decided to include the first supernatural
occurrence (door slamming by itself). By this point, we feel we’ve probably only
really engaged the female audience. To interest the male audience, we used an
attractive female teenager to play the protagonist. This would engage interest in the
film and they would see the first part of the supernatural occurrence, as boys also
enjoy the thrill.

7. What Have you Learnt About Technologies From the Process of
Construction This Product?
From the process of constructing our film we have learnt through various different
software's, video cameras etc the advantages and disadvantages and also the
complications and successes. One of the main things that our group had to get used
to, was how to handle a camera, we had to learn how to keep a steady hand, we also
learnt about different camera shots and angles, such as match-on-match, and how to
achieve these effectively. Initially we used a software called Pinnacle 14 but this
caused too many problems on the school network so we switched to Adobe
Elements which was much more easier to manage, Adobe was fairly easy to get our
heads round as it was similar to Pinnacle 14. When we first started we used Google to
generate ideas for our film and what genre which really helped us to develop our
ideas. We also used YouTube to research horror film to see what they consisted of
e.g. titles and music. Throughout our project, we have been using Word Press blog
to record all of our planning and keep up to track. We also had to get used to a
software called WINFF which converted our files for AVI to FLV so that they were
suitable to watch. All of which have made us all more knowledgeable with
technology allowing us to edit easier and find out new methods and extras for our
film.

8. Looking Back at Your Preliminary Task, What do You Feel You Have
Learnt in The Progression From it to The Full Product?
We have all noticed a huge difference in our ability from our preliminary task to our main
task as we have become more aware of how to get certain shots correct due to
mistakes made in our preliminary task and also lighting and relevant music which have
helped us to improve. Especially in terms of organisation, we have learnt a lot. We
used a different location for our main task which put our skills to test but we did do
some practice shots to make sure they looked realistic and more manageable. Doing
this made us even more enthusiastic to continue doing a horror film as we all thought
it looked realistic. We all learnt how to do the basics like cutting, editing and changing
around the clips etc for Pinnacle 14, of which we could transfer to Adobe Elements
and advance our editing skills which helped improve our film clip further. Overall we
all think that we put in a good amount of time, detail and enthusiasm. We all
contributed to our film clip, which was very good, but we feel that with a little more
time and a little more teamwork it could have been improved, our ideas held much
potential. Overall, we are all really pleased with our clip. We feel it suits the brief and
our genre of horror almost perfectly.