AS Level Media Studies Evaluation

Liam Copeland - 5036Sunil Singh -5151

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

1) The first key frame we chose is the establishing shot of the church and the surronding area of the church. We chose to put this in at the begining of the opening to show the audience the setting of the opening which is important due to mise-en-scene.

2) The second key frame from our opening tells the

audience that this is a remote place as they are

shown an empty alley which doesn't have any street

lighting for when its dark. We included a location

which is remote because it gives the audience a sense

that something bad will happen which is a

convention which nearly all horror films posses .

3) This is the third key frame we feel is important because it shows a couple walking down a alley in a

fairly happy mood and with a positive attitude. This is

important as it establishes to the audience the

characters. It shows there costume and also there

attitude towards each other. For example this clip shows the audience these two are

very close as they are holding hands.

4) Me and my partner particularly like this shot because it shows all of the characters included in the opening however they are from two separate shots but show the contrast of appearance and attitude between the killer and the victims which is why we chose this as key frame 4. This shot could also represent the killer having a flashback of these people or it could be showing the audience what is in his mind.

5) The next key frame shows the audience the killer

holding his choice of weapon which allows the audience to

recognize that something bad is going to happen as it is not normal behaviour to carry a knife. This a key

moment for the audience as they are kept in suspense as to who the killer is because only parts of the killer are revealed in the opening. In

some ways this has similarities to scary movie

when ghost face is hidden by a mask and the audience and

victim are not shown the killers real face.

6) This key frame shows how the killers plan

comes together as the victims girlfriend is

distracted by a mystery phone call which leads

her away from the victim. A distraction of some sort

is used in many horror films to leave the victim

on their own. This means the victim is then very

vulnerable.

7) Key frame seven is very crucial because it shows how the victim is killed and it also allows the audience to recognize the killer from early shots. The close-up shot means the audience are dragged into the action at the point at which the victim is stabbed. This shot also acts like a point of view shot from the killers perspective so it shows the audience what the killer is seeing.

8) This key frame is the only shot in the

whole of the opening which allows the

audience to see the whole body of the killer in one shot.

However the killers identity is still not

revealed as this shot is of the back of the killer who is fleeing

the scene. This allows for tension to build around the killers identity and also

creates more suspense for the

audience.

9) The final key frame is also the final shot

in the opening of The Shadow Stalker. This

shot is of the weapon the killer used to

murder his victim. This shot tells the

audience the killer may have finish his

attack on any victims as he has left his weapon behind.

How does your horror opening represent particular social groups?

Our Horror Opening represents teenage social groups due to the props we chose to include in the opening

and the costumes we dressed the characters in.

We dressed this character in a hooded top and a winter hat to hide as much of this persons facial

features as possible. The prop this character had is a knife and we also gave the character gloves to hide his hands and to show that he has the intention of

killing somebody and getting away with it by keeping his hands clean.

I would compare this character in our opening to Ghost face from scary movie 1. I think this because the producers of scary movie also choose to keep there killer, Ghost face’s face covered throughout there film however they achieve this with a mask.

Ghost face is also given a knife as a weapon in parts of the film which is just like the character in our

opening. I think the unknown killer in our film is as equally as vicious as ghost face however our film does

not have the humour which scary movie does.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product?

A production company is a company responsible for physical production of new media, performing arts, film, radio or a television program. We discussed what kind of media institution might distribute out media product. We felt as we should aim at low budget film institutions rather that high budget film institutions because high budget films would have a lot more newer technology than low budget film institutions and also we didn’t have the kind of technology a high budget film institution would have. We think that our film should be produced by a lower budget film institution because we haven’t used new technologies that high budget film institutions would have. An example of a successful low budget film institution is The Filmmakers. There most successful low-budget film was 1999's The Blair Witch Project. It had a budget of around $60,000 but grossed almost $249 million worldwide.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for our media product which is The Shadow Stalker would be mainly teenagers and young adults in the age range of 15-25. This would be the target audience because they are the closest age group to the characters in the film and they will probably have many things in common because they may have had the same kind of lifestyle in the past.

If The Shadow Stalker was released for public viewing it would require a

classification certificate by the BBFC. Our film would be classified as a 15 Certificate film under the guidelines of the British Board of

film classification. I think this is suitable because it wouldn’t be

appropriate to give this film a certificate of anything under 15

because the scenes that follow may exceed the guidelines.

I think our audience would shop in very fashionable shops such as Blue inc, New Look, Burtons and River Island.

I think they would be very interested in music and entertainment. The kind of shows they would watch would most likely be The Inbetweeners, Mock the Week and talent shows. The kind of music our audience would listen is probably pop, Hip-hop and R&B.

How did you attract your audience?

Other films that relate to our horror film opening is a film called Kidulthood. Our inspiration came from this film because at the ending there is a boy and a girl talking and another person comes along unexpected and kills the boy with his bat. This film is about teenagers and a lot of teenagers have probably seen this film and our target audience for our film opening is also teenagers. Another film that is similar to ours is a film called scary movie 1 where at the start there is a women that receives lots of phone calls from the killer and eventually you see the killer outside and then it jumps to another shot where the killer is inside the woman’s house and then the woman runs but the killer still gets a chance to stab her.

What have you learnt about technologies from constructing your media product?

We have learnt a lot about the technologies from the process of constructing our horror film opening. There are lot of programs that we had never used before for example Final Cut, Livetype, Garageband, iDVD and iMovie. We both are now used to all of these programs and used them all in the making of our horror film opening. Also there are websites that we used as well, for example Freesound where we could download sound that is not copyright. Slideshare which we used to upload PowerPoint's to the Blogger which is used to keep updated and post everything on it that was related to media studies.

What have you learnt from the continuity editing task compared to the full product?

This is a cube transition to the left

This is a close up shot of the hand

This is a the 180 degrees rule where two people face each other and both of them are in the whole shot

This is a shot reverse shot which is shown below. When the camera keeps switching from one shot to the other over the shoulder

From the preliminary task we have learnt a lot new skills that we used in are main task and we also improved a lot of our skills with the camerawork and also we know a lot more about editing as we use the program called Final Cut Express. There are lot of camera shots that we now know how to do but we didn't when we were doing the preliminary task.