This document summarizes a media evaluation presentation on a film opening. It discusses how the film opening used conventions of the mystery/psychological genre including dark lighting, dramatic music, and ambiguous characters. It also discusses how the film opening subverted stereotypes by having the younger character questioning an older prisoner. The film opening would be distributed by Columbia Films and aimed at audiences 15 years old and older. Creating the film opening helped the students learn editing skills and the importance of planning shots and dialogue to make smooth transitions between scenes.

1. Media Evaluation Presentation
Handcuffs

2. 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products? (i.e. of how did your study of film
openings help you to make your own?)
• We started planning our film opening keeping in mind the convention being
lighting, music, costumes and locations in other physiological/mystery films. We knew when we
were watching the films to get inspiration, and we needed to take notes, we had to use these as
inspiration so we could make it clear to the audience what genre our film is.
• A few typical features that we see in physiological films is that its dark, creepy, music, voice
over, flash blacks. Even though we used some of these feature we adapted them to be more
personal to our film. We wanted to keep the audiences in suspense so their minds didn’t wonder
off and keep them guessing which person they thought would be in the handcuffs, we didn’t want
to make it to essay for them to guess so the dialogue doesn’t give away any details to who is the
prisoner, their clothing is the same. So portraying the characters as the same they can only go off
their instinct which will have social stereotyping influence.
• We kept to the norms of physiological/mystery film, so we used dramatic music which is often
used in this genre of filming, this way we knew it defiantly fit the our genre. We checked that
there were no copyrights on the music we used. By having this tense music helps build up
suspense for the audience which also helps keeping them interested. When we had to research
our own mystery films we looked at sherlock holmes in our group, the music in sherlock holmes is
dramatic so was our film opening music. I also looked at sucker punch and the opening that is
gloomy matching our opening also.

3. 2. How does your media product represent particular social groups? (i.e. how
did you show people according to stereotypes, creating believable characters
and so on?)
The social grouping has categories of; age, gender, disability/abitlity, religion and ethnicity, each of
these groups have strong stereotypes. In our filming we have gone against a stereotype for the social
grouping of age. In our film opening we have two people, a man and a younger adult, the stereotype
for an adult would be boring, already working and sensible, and young adult would be stereotyped
for being in mischief, rebellious and unemployed. Our film has a twist, because it goes against this
stereotype. The younger adult in our group film opening is actually the police officers that is
questioning the adult prisoner, so its going against the idea of young adults being not being
employed, the fact that our young adult actor is not the prisoner shows that he is not the one in
trouble, this is also showing that we’re going against the stereotype of young adults being
mischeifious in our film opening. The adult is the prisoner which shows the twist and opposite of the
stereotype, adults being sensible the adult being the prisoner shows that he is irresponsible. This is a
surprise to our audience, nothing is given away that there is a specific prisoner yet, until the ending
of the opening which reveals handcuffs on the adult, when he pull out his hands onto the table. This
stereotype is also well hidden by the costumes that they’re wearing because we couldn’t have them
wearing obvious clothes like, jail clothing and people uniform, otherwise there would be no
mystery, by having such a shocking mystery revealed early help want the reader to watch more
because if there is a mystery like this at the beginning then they will have more to look forward
during the film, and because its such a grabbing shock, they will want more. I think the fact that its
something you instantly assume to be its more surprising.

4. 3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and
why? (i.e. what film company will make your film and why?)
We used Columbia as our
company that would produce
our opening, because the
films that Columbia produce
are dark films, films like
Salt,
after earth and django unchained
so we decided that this company
was fitting for our film opening
Since technological convergence has got
better people can see movie without
going to the cinema, so this makes it
easier to share our film opening on world
wide platforms, smart
phones, laptops, computers and ipods.
This is also helping youtube get customers
a technical term for this is synergy

5. 4. Who would be the audience for your media product? (i.e. who would
watch this?)
• When we were deciding our film certificated we came to the conclusion
that it would be suitable for anyone over the age of 15.
• We knew that in our film we had images that were of violence on our
“polaroid” pictures and a lot of the dialogue was about crime. We also
thought that there may be some scenes which contained strong language.
• To make sure we had covered the ages poperly we looked at the British
Board of Film Classification.
• For a 15 there can be …
- They can include all of the following
- Discriminorty and offensive terms
- Nudity
- Violence
- Horror works
- Drugs

6. 5. How did you attract/address your audience? (i.e. how did you make sure
you’d want them to watch it?)
- We made sure that it wasn’t the same as all the other films that had been done in
media classes with the genre of horror, we decided to take a more interesting
genre that was different we decided on the genre of physiological and
mystery, because if there is mystery they will natural as humans want to see the
rest.
- We used these age requirements to help us certificate our film opening, we
decided to certificate it 15.
U Suitable for all
PG Parental guidance
12A Cinema release suitable for 12 years and over
12 Video release suitable for 12 years and over
15 Suitable only for 15 years and over
18 Suitable only for adults
R18 Adult works for licensed premises only
- We used a student from our age group and an adult so it brings in both sets of
audiences adults and young adults

7. 6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this
product? (i.e. how did making this film opening help you to learn about computers,
cameras and the Internet?)
• During this project we used a range of new equipment, such as a dolly, which
is a tripod on wheels, so its easier to record, it made it very easy to get smooth
filming. We also used I-Movie in this final film so we had to get some editing
skills from the internet to help us because we had never used the I-movie.
• So the internet came into use for making the filming run smoothly, we found
there was a editing process that help make the film flow better called the kens
burn effect, we used it to zoom in on some images that was taken at the crime
since and some writing and handcuffs thank accompanied the pictures, and to
make quick transitions in the movie, like at the end relieving the handcuffs.
• Didn’t learn anything new about the camera, because I take a photography
course, and I’ve been doing photography for 3 years, apart from not knowing
that the camera was compatible with a window editing software, which is why
we resolute to using I-Movie.

8. 7. Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel
you have learnt in the progression from it to full product? (i.e. the preliminary task
shows you that film making is hard- how did you develop from there?)
• The video of our preliminary task had its positives and negatives. The positive
perspective is that it the 180 degree rule at all times Tii was on the right and
Deliah was on the left . The whole idea of the preliminary task was to get the 180
degree achieved which we did. I would say the things that didn’t really work as
well was the change of the camera transitions, there is one part that fades well
but the speaking isn’t to good either it jumps because there wasn’t a continuous
conversation which was needed. From this we get that we need to take into
consideration that it should be a good transition from our actors in the scene
unlike the preliminary task, there does need to be a script fully remembered by
the actors so there is any awkward changes of conversation. We know what we
didn’t do so well and how to change it for the next time and we know how to
carry on our strengths.
• From our preliminary task we developed skills of how to avoid when we filmed
our preliminary task we filmed on different types of phone which meant the
sound was different and so was the filming angle, we decided to film on one
camera so everything stayed the same, we also had only one person filming.