12E1 Evaluation – Ellipsis…

By Almaz Camporeale

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

products?I believe that our media product does in some ways use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products. Whilst filming and planning our final piece we wanted our Psychological Thriller to be different from the way it is normally layed out, by starting the film as though there was a part missing before, so it gets the audience hooked from the beginning as they want to know what happened before. Whereas normal conventional methods would have just told the story as it is and in some cases not create suspense for the viewer, which in a way is what makes a Psychological Thriller suspenseful – the suspense in the story.

So you could say that our final piece is not made in the standard structure of start, middle and end, but adds more intensity in the structure starting with the middle then jumping to the beginning and finishing with the ending, as another interesting way to tell the story.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

For our final piece “Ellipsis” we chose our target group to be older teens aged 16-17 as our two characters whom you see in the first 35 seconds of the clip are aged 16-17; so immediately you know that our product represents teenagers as the particular social group. This can easily be understood, as later on in the piece there are no signs of any character being older because it is focused on a 16 – 17 year old girl. We chose this age group because it seemed easier for us to know what an audience of our age would want to see and what topic we should focus on and how to approach the topic.

The fact that I used social networking sites such as Facebook, to campaign, also helped us show the public what our film is about and who it is aimed at.

However, I feel like our film could also appeal to a wider audience, such as people who would go to see a low-budget independent British, as this film could fall under this category. So with that said our final product could be aimed at adults too; adults who enjoy seeing Psychological Thrillers or who are interested in understanding our/the younger generation. Therefore I would say that choosing only one particular age category for our film may be a little bit of a broad overstatement in some ways.

Gender- I think that gender is one of the important aspects of representing a social group. In most psychological thrillers the main character would most probably be male. Like this the characters are taken more seriously in comparison to leading women in films such as “scream” where all they seem to do is gossip. To make our leading woman more realistic and taken more seriously, I feel we had to dress her the way a girl in her position would dress and we also had to get our actress “Nikita Patel” to be believable (serious, depressed, isolated and lonely, as that is the characters attitude through out the opening sequence).

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

I think that a media institution such as Paramount or Warner Bros. would distribute our product as they have both distributed similar films (“Shutter Island” and “Inception”) in the same genre as ours so the audience will be familiar with their previous work and would hopefully want to come see our film!

However to be a little bit more realistic I would have to choose a distributor like: “Optimum Films”. This is because this company have worked on small, low-budget, independent British films as well as blockbuster high budget movies so it would be a good combination.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our target audience for this project would preferably be young adults, older teens, so the certificate would be a 15. We chose this age group/ age range because the characters in our movie are the same sort of age and we thought that the topics we brought up in our opening sequence would be topics teens would be interested in. Programmes such as Skins and Misfits are always influencing the younger generation on what the ‘cool’ way to act is, but i believe that our product could teach the audiences what not to do and how to face the past.

How did you attract/address your audience?We attracted the audiences attention through ‘Themes’, ‘Genre’ and the ‘Narrative’. We did this is by using a theme which could be common in everyday lives; themes such as isolation, loneliness and blackmail. I would think that this is a way that we can get the audience to relate to our piece as it could easily happen in peoples everyday lives. The narrative is very similar to the theme, as it looks into blackmail, loneliness and isolation of this girl who has done something terrible in her past which is coming back to haunt her, which can also teach our audience to never do something stupid, something in which you will regret in the future or the past may come back and haunt you!

Another way we addressed them is by carefully choosing what our two main would wear – asking ourselves: Is this what someone this age in this position would wear? Would I wear this? Would the audience relate to this character, see themselves similar to her?

We thought over the genre very carefully, thought about what type of audience would see a film like this, and what the audience like and what they want out of a film! So we looked at different films similar to ours such as “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and took ideas and inspiration from them. We also looked at other films we liked, and ones which the narratives could influence the way our film would turn out.

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

This media project has shown me a wide range of new technology that I did not know of before – such as new programmes/software. This includes programmes such as iMovie, at first I had problems with this as it was all very new to me (as I had never properly used an Apple Mac before), however, once i became familiar with its functions, the process of editing became very straightforward and quick for me.

With the iMovie software we were able to do editing and merging the sound with visual. This really challenged my computer skills and helped me improve them and teached me what I thought I would never be able to do as I had never tried editing before. The main challenges I faced were trying to combine the sound with the visual as you have to have a good eye and ear to get every little detail perfect, as you have to make sure the sound is synchronized with the image. Another problem or challenge I faced was fitting all the clips we had in 3 minutes – when all together our full piece was fifteen minutes long. So trying to pick out the best clips was very difficult as well.

All is an example of how Media Studies has opened up new things for me, because if I had not have chosen Media, I would not have come across any programme like iMovie and I would have never learnt how to edit my final media product.- One more example of what I have learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product is how to work the Canon HDV30 Camcorder. I got a lot of practice using this camera whilst filming as I was the one shooting most of the scenes, and I found it very easy and straightforward to use which came as a surprise as it looks quite complicated. I was able to find the different buttons and controllers without having to spend a long time working out how to work it. But seeing as I along with the rest of the group are all digital natives it was an advantage as we have grown up with technology of this sort so it was pretty simple/ straightforward. However, the only slight disadvantage I found to using the camera was that I was able to detect the smallest of sounds and the slightest of movements, so I had to be careful while filming to not make any sound/movement

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

• Following the previous slide, here are some other examples of what I have learnt about technologies during the process of constructing this product.

• Throughout the period while we were filming we had to be blogging nearly everyday on ‘blogspot.com’ about our experiences, planning, filming, and different films which had inspired or influenced us. Blogging was very new to me - I had only ever blogged once before, so through doing this I learnt a lot, and I ended up enjoying doing so and would happily create my own blog! Blogging really tested me, but I’m glad I participated in it.

• We also used the likes of youtube and imdb for research and freeplaymusic.com whilst choosing our background music.

Looking back on your preliminary task (FEED THE FISH)

Over the past few months I feel as though I have learnt a great deal more about Media Studies. For example how to film, the different types of shots you should use - (to create different impacts on the audience) - and in general technologies and software available in filming.

However, over this period, there have been one or two errors that I would have preferred not to have made. These include: being more organised, having a much more detailed plan of the task we had to undertake, as well as setting deadlines for ourselves for the different elements to do with our project. -

However, with all these positive aspects of our project, there were errors that i would change and improve on in future projects. This includes the fact that I did not contribute as many ideas as i would have liked; If I did contribute a lot more than I already had, it would have enabled me to feel much more confident in what we were doing, and I would have felt as though i had actually participated more in collecting the ideas.

Other than that I thoroughly enjoyed the process of this coursework and would happily do something similar in the future