AS media final cut - Alone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x2qoCOKQvg

Dear Examiner

Dear Examiner,
We hope very much  that you enjoy reading our blog as much as we enjoyed making it.
There are categories on the top left you can use to navigate or by date in the panel directly to the left.
We have tried to make it as interesting as possible by using interactive media, visual representations of our ideas, and even sometimes some humour!
We have completed our coursework and are very proud of it and all of the skills we have learnt throughout the project
all that's left to say is thank you for reading this,
and enjoy!

Evaluation

Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
 
Question 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?
 
Question 3 - What kind of media intitution might distribute your product and why?
 
Question 4 and 5 - Who would be the audience for your media product? How did you attract/address your audience?

Question 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of contructing this product?

Question 7 - Looking back at your preliminary, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Evaluation question 7

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



Evaluation Question 6

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

When constructing our two minute opening we used many different programmes.

One of these programmes was Garageband. 

This is a piece of software which allows you to play music into the computer. The Mac has over 100 realistic software instruments at your fingertips. You can find pianos, strings, drums, guitars, and horns — everything from bass to woodwinds. Just create a new track, choose the instrument, and play. We used this programme to create a spooky feel with the music.

We did this by including a childs nursery rhyme which we liked the idea of because our opening involves a young child. (music in horor reserach click here)

We chose the nursery rhyme ‘Ring around the Rosie’ because of the meaning of the rhyme. (for score devlopment click here)

To create the spooky voice, I recorded my mum, Angela singing the tune into the garageband recording. This then was distorted and tuned up to make it sound creepy. I then added a layer of piano playing the notes of the rhyme.

Piano recording 'Ring around the Rosie'

This then was layed with the loops ‘Evolving Atmosphere 02’,’Deep pad’, and ‘Contemplative Synth’. All of these are pre-recorded loops that I put together to create the music.

I decided to not have the singing and the score of the rhyme playing at the same time because it made the music seem disjointed and makes the audience feel on edge.

Final score for Alone (insert here)  

The idea to use the nursery rhyme came from when we watched ‘Woman in Black’ opening titles (click here for full post). This involves a nursery rhyme called ‘If you go down to the woods today’.

The Hardware

The Camera we used was an iPhone 5. When arriving at our venue we found that the camera we had wasn’t as good quality as the iPhone, so we chose to film in that. We used a basic recording video function on the iphone and when transferring the footage into iMovie we changed the shots to black and white. 

The inspiration for using the phone is from The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American psychological horror film written and directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. The film was produced by the Haxan Films production company. This movie was filmed using a phone held camera.

By using the iphone we were able to use the friendly user interface. This is where you can click where on the shot you want to focus on. 

This is used in this shot of the gate. In the background you can see it blurred out Harriett walking. 

Another way we used technology to benifit us, was to put it our video online on Youtube. 

We posted our opening first cut online on youtube and asked people to leave comments on what they liked and what we could improve.

All of these comments are helpful in someway. With the comments about the font we changed that due to the fact that the font looked like a slasher film.

The comments about the music are helpful because it allowed us to understand that we are achieving the creepy tone to the music for the piece.

Evaluation Question 4

Questions answered: 

Who would be the audience for your media product

The audience for our media product is the 15-25 year old age gap we believed that the use of a classic horror film setting of an abandoned building, the use of a young female protagonist, a child actor and the feature of black and white. 

• The target audience would be attracted to the young female actor as they can feel sympathy for her as she's alone and about to embark on entering the house alone.
• The white and black feature shows the audience it's not set in modern day and is an alternative modern horror movie, contrasting the others.
• The use of a child actor would attract the the target audience as well because it contrasts the view of child innocence.
• The classic horror movie setting of an abandoned building attracts the audience because it conveys loneliness, abandonment and isolation, leading the audience to feel more sympathy for the young female actor.

A video evaluating the target audience and how we attracted them. 

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/ address your audience.

With the use of social networking e.g facebook and twitter.

The use of social networking for our target audience the 15-25 year old was a huge advantage to our film opening. The use of twitter by linking our teaser trailers, posting poles, posters, questions and pictures allow people to Retweet our tweets gaining us promotion for our film opening and creating a buzz about about it. Our target audience are more open to going to see our film in a group or after its been recommended by there friends by status, tweets or comments. 

With Facebook we made a page to promote our film opening by having teaser trailers and polls on the page to attract the audiences. Also with the use of cookies we could see what they liked and talked about and so then an advert for our film comes on the side of there page leading to the trailer to promote our film further.  as people were talking about it and also allowing our target audience to hear reviews and responses to our film opening.

With YouTube we could also promote our film opening by using a wide range or tags so that when they search horror, black and white etc. Our film opening comes up and they can watch it and then like it and link to there friends, our it on Facebook or twitter. The use of social network allows us to promote our media product and also allows us to access our target audience on 15-25 year olds.