Evaluation- Faith evaluation writeup

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media production?

The title of the film that was created by SpadesProduction is "Like It Was Yesterday", which in a way gave the overall idea that something was about to happen again. Even though it does not give away what happened it hints the fact that it was not something good. This relates the plot and the genre of the film. Our film was a psychological film which was meant to make people reflect on what the film would be about and in using that title, we were able to achieve this. We were able to film with different shots and angles in different rural areas, which real media production uses in horror movies. We were able to use the location to stereotype the different groups involved and in this case it was a group of black girls living in a rural area. this links back with what real media production uses, for example in Texas Chainsaw, they were able to film in a rural area in Texas to present the idea that those types of areas are the dangerous type of places to live in. Most trailers would start with a peaceful looking environment to draw the attention of the audience, but in the end it ends up being the opposite of what the film is actually about. We have similarly done that in our film, when it started off in a bright setting with sunshine to a house full of darkness and mysteries. The crops we used also conforms to the idea of a horror movie which in this case was a knife. The Knife symbolizes danger and films like The Halloween series starring Michael Meyers and his choice of weapon was a sharp bladed kitchen knife. Our character was a small black girl and those that attacked her were two other black girls but those look older than she is. In a typical horror film, the “weak" character is played by a girl and we were able to use that idea and place it in our film. Even though our main character was not conventional looking however the characters age was not unusual due to the fact that it followed the idea the genre involving teenagers in horror films.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film was related to:

1. Gender

2. Race

3. Class

4. Age

In this case, our main character was a working class black female around the age of 16. In today's society, Black girls are seen in two ways. They are seen to be the weakest group within society and they are also seen as threatening and violent. We were able to present this because in our film, the main character was the weakest one who was bullied and threatened and those who threatened her were also black females. In society, it is seen that black girls tend to turn on each other and cause trouble with one another. This may not be the case in society now, we were able to present this. One of the violent girls in the movie, was wearing a hoodie and this stereotypes the idea that black people in hoodies are involved with crime and gangs involving violence. The mother in the movie is a black working women around the age of 40. And in the film, we can see there were no male present, and this shows the stereotypical idea that a home is not complete without the male role controlling it. As we can see there was no control within the family as the girls were left alone in the house and it can be seen that they had no fatherly figure to protect them.

Who would be the audience for your media product? /How did you Attract/ address your audience?

We have chosen teenagers around the age of 13-19, due to the fact that they can relate to what happens behind closed doors. This makes them aware that there are things happening behind closed doors in other people's lives which society is not aware of. We chose this audience because the characters in our film were also teenagers, which draws their attention and make them think about how they are treated equally or stereotyped in society.

We were able to attract our audience by placing them in a certain location which they can relate to. The characters we chose were wearing clothes that the audience can also relate to.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

During the creation of my media product, an opening sequence, I’ve learnt a great deal about technologies and they have vastly helped, and improved, my media product. This is the camera we used to film our opening sequence. To ensure the different shots in our film opening where effective we had to use a camera which was clear. We tried using the canon but we had problems with the lighting as the quality wasn’t good. This affected the overall appearance of our sequence as it wasn’t clear of what was happening in the sequence. We found the camera to be successful as we were able to record the footage in high definition and the quality of sound was good. The Sony Camera.

Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progress form it to the full product?

 I feel that I have made immense progress since the preliminary task. The preliminary task was very straightforward and lacked in any interesting camera angles, editing or dialogue. As I researched and looked into the drama genre and many opening sequences, I began to develop the look and feel of what I wanted to achieve in my opening.