Kieron Reid's evaluation

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

The fact that the victim in my media product is a white male, challenges the convention of a real horror film. This is because usually those of ethnicity or female ‘sexual objects’ are the first to die in horror films. This could be because of their loose morals, that they are seen to be not as innocent as perhaps other characters.

Todorov’s theory of narrative

 

Todorov’s theory of narrative suggests that every story includes an equilibrium, disequilibrium (disturbance), followed by a re-equilibrium. The re-equilibrium is not necessarily the same as the original equilibrium, often something will have changed from the original equilibrium due to the disturbance. The equilibrium is the initial situation where everything is in balance; Disequilibrium involves the equilibrium being disturbed, in horrors this is often by a death; and a re equilibrium, in which the new equilibrium is created.

However there are five stages which narrative pass through according to his theory, these are:

·         A state of normality

·         An event disrupting the equilibrium- this event could be a character introduction or a character’s action

·         The main protagonist swiftly realises that the equilibrium has been disturbed

·         The protagonist tries to resolve the problem

·         Equilibrium is restored but because of changes (good or bad),  the equilibrium made is a new equilibrium

Our film opening does follow Todorov’s theory of narrative, as the equilibrium is the main character walking along the scene, the disturbance would be his killing, and the re-equilibrium is not included. However, as this is just an opening then following the opening the new equilibrium is picked up, but obviously as the film opening was only two minutes long, we could not show this new equilibrium. But if we could have made this entire film, then the new equilibrium would have been shown at the end of the film, once the murderer has been found. Although there is in a way a new equilibrium once the ambulance has been rang. It is a new equilibrium because that character that died is no longer in the film.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My media product represent’s social groups like the present day ‘chav’, as the kind of person that will be walking around with his phone out at night in clear view, for thieves. We made him suit this sort of stereotype by causing him to have jogging bottoms on, as is stereotypically what this social group would be wearing.
My media product represents the killer as somebody that has a particularly disturbed mentality.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

A media institution is an established, often-profit based organization, that deal in the creation and distribution of advertising, entertainment and information services.



The sort of media institution that would distribute my media product would be twisted pictures, as they are a reasonably large company that have produced films such as saw which are the same genre as my media product. This means that they would have experience in this genre therefore could tell me about how successful they expected it to be.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for my film would be teenagers as they seem more likely to be interested in a film such as this, especially seeing as the victims are going to be around that age group too. This means that the teenage age group would find it easier to empathise with the victims as they can imagine themselves in the victim’s position. As well as this, the film would be designed to keep their attention. This would be easier to attain than with a significantly older target audience, as the producers have the same sort of attention span.

How did you attract/address your target audience?

I attracted my target audience by ensuring that the film appealed to them by looking at the sort of techniques used in other films designed to attract a similar age group. For example the ring. Which involved little lighting, and a lot of point of view shots allowing the audience to view things from the main character or the killer’s perspective. E.g. When the little girl is climbing out of the television or when the video is first being watched.

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

I’ve learnt how to crop the scene during editing as I had to do that to get rid of somebody in one of the shots that did not need to be there as he was not part of the plot. This had to be done to make the opening more successful and help to create realism, as his backing away from the scene did not appear natural at all. Moreover I have learnt how to blog effectively, including how to upload videos during posts so that the correct text corresponds to the clip.

Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression of it to your full product?

Looking back to my preliminary task, I feel that I have learnt how to introduce a character using a panning scene to the sequence of shots which will follow. As in my preliminary task, I had to use a panning shot to introduce the main character entering the room, followed by shot-reverse-shot of over the shoulder and mid shots during conversation.

 I have then transferred these techniques to quickly edit together many shots, without losing the continuity, in my full product. Maintaining the continuity is something which became much more important to me after the preliminary task as during the preliminary task I accidentally edited together two of the wrong sequences of shots. Meaning i edited in take one with take two.