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Sadie's Evaluation. Question 7

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

Above is links for both my perliminary task, and our finished media product. I believe that there a substantial improvments in the second video, showing how my camera angles, camera shotss and concept have all progressed quite well.

In my perliminary task there are quite a few obvious problems for example;

-The sound levels are terrible with an odd reverb making the overall outcome seem tacky

-The camera isn't as high a quality to that of the SLR we used, and i think that again this decreases the professionalness

-The continuity isn't brilliant and i don't think runs as smoothly as our final product, however i have learnt from here and believe this perliminary was a good place to start and really helped me.

-This lack of any form of introduction ie. the dialouge was scripted badly, alongside the lack of typography or text.

-I think the colouring isn't as effective either, as its colours were plain and flat, where as on our final product we attemtped to get a different atmosphere and sense of something deeper, and this is by fare more effective.

Although i think that this wasn't a great attempt, i'm still happy as everyone has to start somewhere and it could have gone a lot worse.

I believe that this in-depth knowledge on camera angles and shots helped me greatly within our final outcome as i had great understanding and knew what we needed to do to make this professional.

However this didn't go entirely to plan, as two very artistic visual people, my partner Vicky and I had a vision, and even though i am relatively happy with our final result, in my mind things didn't go to plan or some out quite as well as i had anticipated.

This could be down to being a little bit to precocious. We had this plan to do something different and although we knew it would be a challege we thought we would have been able to handle it better than we did, because of actors dropping out and letting us down, out editing software taking such a long time and the fact that we didn't particularly always have the patience for this, retrospectively this was slightly disasterous. Looking on the bright side though, we finally have an end product, a lot of thought and time has gone into it and i believe it is a much better standard that that of our perliminary task, ever if it wasn't quite as amazing as our expectations.

Sadie's Evaluation. Question 6

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

Through doing this product i have discovered many things about technologies for example, how infuriating they can be!

APPLE MAC

Though-out the entire time of doing this producton i have had to used a mac, as opposed the the previous software i have used in the past which have been Microsoft windows. To begin with because i wasn't particularly used to this form of computer i found the process of finding things and saving things on these devices somewhat tedious, and because i was very unfamilar with everything, this appeared to be much harder than it needed to be. However even though this first obsticle was a bit of a hurdle to get over, eventually i did end up getting the hang of it, and managed to have a better knowledge and understanding on how things worked. Still i prefer windows to macs, but i feel as if my skills in macs have increased as well as confidence in using them.


SLR CAMERA


In order to shoot footage for our film, we used an SLR camera, the college offered video cameras, however we believed that this single lens reflex beat would have more of a profession outcome and help towards making our film look more realistic and exceed that on anyone elses. The only downside is that the files were substantially larger on SLRS as the detail was more pronounced and there were more pixels in the given shot then what there would have been if we had used a regular video camera. Because our footage was larger, in order to record the maximum amount we had to use an 8bg memory card (larger than what some of our peers were using, as it was necessary).
Although you do notice a substantial improvement in some of our shots, having a large file to import and edit proved to be difficult and again, we ended up making it harder than it really needed to be.


FINAL CUT PRO

We used Final cut pro in order to edit and successfully construct and present our media product. This program allowed us to cut, shorten, lengthen, replicate, temporaily delete and just generally edit our product accordingly. Again this proved to be a very long excersise as i had mentioned before in the previous paragraph that we encoutered more problems than that we should have because of the large sizing of our files. Rending took atleast 5 times as long as our peers doing similar projects, also final cut wasn't always the most reliable as it was unable to cope with this amount and froze quite regularly. Which was frustrating when we hadn't saved for a while, so much of our time was wasted on this. Also we chose to have more footage than most other groups, which now i regret as, with this problem adittion it does take a lot longer than it really should.

Sadie's Evaluation. Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

How did you attract/address your audience? on Prezi

Sadie's Evaluation. Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Through much deliberation and research, and asking our typical audience what they would like, we have come to this conlcusion;
We have learnt that people expect to see copious amounts of gore in zombie films, whether it's severed heads, or blood from struggles. They expect to see weaponry, particularly melee weapons, as it ties in with the standard survival narrative. The target audience is expected to be 15-24 year olds, of a non specified gender. Participants expressed that high quality makeup and mise en scene would greatly encourage them to see a zombie film, as it adds to the realism and gore.

Firstly we have aimed our product of the ager ange audience of 15-24 year olds for number of reasons.Firstly we believe that the main characters in our film (the survivors) are of a similar age, this would then create a link between our audience and characters as they would share the same mode of behavious and could relate to what they would do in their situation, however whilst still being in the comfort  of their own home and out of harms way, they would still be able to think and almost be in the characters head, understanding how and why they did the things they have been doing to stay alive, through this connection we believe that the audience would then creat an emotive bond with the character, making it seem more than just a film and become more attatch sympathythising for that character. Which is always successful when creating films like this.

Although we are making our audience as wide based as possible (to have an more open market, thus consuming more viewers, meaning more income) i think if we had to really generalise our target audience i think we would both agree that it is ideally more males, as again stereotypically, through-out movie history, males have statistically always seemed to enjoy the genres with gore, violence and mindless killing more so than females. This is why we decided on a female character as opposed to a male, we believed this aspect added "sex appeal". Having a typically conventionally attractive female again we believe that the males would be more so into that, than that of it if it was a man, also perhaps females watching might aspire to be like this female hero that their boyfriends seem to be "drueling over".

I think that our adudience is most likely to be the social class D/E.This is mainly because because of the age range they are in - they are likely to be students and their occuppation might nto be stable or welly paid. Not only this but also our adueince are more likely able to relate to them, as the characters of of a similar age to them, which as i said earlier creates more of an connection and makes this more enjoyable for the audience.



Lastly the aspect that we believe to draw our audience in is the relatability factor. The film is based in the UK. Meaniung those in this location would be much more likely to go and see it because again, in ways they can relate to it. Our typical audience would be a fearless bunch, be into gaming- most specifically with blood, more and the thrill factor, like left 4 dead for example. They would also be into comics that involve fantasys and heroes, perhaps aspiring to just like their favourite characters-saving the day.



We asked our typical audience what their favourite genres were , and below are the responses we were given;

Thriller

Horror

Action

Action-Adventure


This is the the response that we expected.
Once we had recived this, we decided to narrow it down even more and concluded to ask them in particular what their favourite films were, these were those results;

-               Zombieland

-               Nightmare on Elm street

-               Saw

-               28 Days Later

-               Paranormal Activity



Again this was the feedback that we suspected and supports our previous assumtion, because we have followed very similar conventions from each of these titles. Because they were a success, i believe our film would be also.

Hiro is a 19 year old, able bodies, male asian, residing in the UK. He is a customer assistant in a comic book store, and spends his spare time engrossed with gaming and graphic novels such as 'The Walking Dead'. He is a student and is studying illustration. Hiro is particularly interesting in the zombie genre due to both his hobbies, and his artistic interest in the use of prosthetics and sylistic representation.

Sadie's Evaluation. Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

A closer view of our character.

I believe that this contrast of stereotypes, shows that she could be represented in two ways.
Firstly because of the way she is dressed and the fact that she is a female being chased, normally in adventure, horror and thriller films the general sterotype is that the female is always inferior to the male, and in almost all cases the female had to rely on him to save her, thus creating the role of a typical "Damsel in distress". This would be the most obvious portrayal to us, seeing as she looks like the victim, being chased by 3 much larger, agressive male-zombies. However,  like i briefly noted on the first image, she did manage not to get caught, but find slight refuge behind the door. Whereas typical inferior female characters are strongly known to have always been caught.

Showing that although she is behind a door, shown by how her expression, how her weapon is positioned and her body language is she still looks as if she will fight if zombies were to knock down the door. Another thing that shows she might be able to independently handle this situation is the blood stained bat she it holding. This could show that she has very recently fought off more zombies, succeding in killing them, and perhaps capeable of doing it again, despite the overpowering circumstances.

Another strong female i would like to compare her to is "Selena" from "28 weeks later"

In many ways Selena is very similar to the unconvential side of our character, she is rutheless and violent, living to keep herself alive and is a brutal zombile killing hero.
Much like how we partly intended our main character to be like.
In both of the image of our main female character, and this one, she is shown to be holding a weapon. Proving she is not to go down easily, without a fight and is ready for anything that gets thrown at her.

This kind of representation of an indipendent female character appeals to our female audience as i believe not all girls like to be represented as weak, as times have changed, so how female roles & i think the majority of them prefer them to be represented a stronger character, almost equal to male roles in films.

Sadie Evaluation. Question 1

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

I believe that our media product successfully matches the conventions of our chosen genre. Not only does it match them but also develop and challeges them also. In this i shall be exploring how we did this, comparing it to the more professional existing media products and that of our own, whilst analysing why.
Firstly i would like to mention that, i will not be analysing just one existing product, but a veriety from the genre of "zombie films" as we were broadly inspired differently by most of them. Concluding that seeing as these films were popular in particular, surely if we were to replicate extracts from each of these then our film too would also be a succsess.


Titles-Title font and style

The image shown on the left is a screen shot from an exsisting zombie film called "Dawn of the dead", and the image shown left is a screenshot taken from ours. After hours of research into titles, the opening that seemed to appeal mostly to us was from "Dawn of the dead". We got the inspiration from these titles as it included jumpy unclear shots and we believed it to fit in with our fast jumpy footage, hopefully seeming as efective. We also thought this was appealing for this genre, as it makes the audience unclear and on edge as to what was happening, giving the first feelings of fear.

With the name of our media product we believe this challenges the typical conventions as it doesn't state the obvious much like other zombie films for example "Zombieland" and "Dawn Of The Dead". These titles are blatant to the audience, as it associates itself with the zombies seen in the film. However our title "Genesis" isn't the typical name for a zombie film, indicating that perhaps this might not be a typical zombie film, but a zombie film with a twist. The definition of "Genesis" meaning - The first book of the bible and another word for creation; Seemingly innocent, could link nicely with our narrative however without telling the audience too much, when the thought of the beggining of a new creation is juxtpositioned with our villian, we believe this creates an exciting sadistic twist, which the audience will love alongside the original conventions of violence, gore and lots of zombies.

You will probably also notice how the colouring between the two shots it also very similar. We did this for a few reasons. The main one being, it's the colour of blood. Showing that in the left image, the typography is bold and shapeless, we chose to devolp this even more, still it being the colour of blood however in bloody fingerprints and splatters. We decided that as the name "Genesis" wasn't blatent enough, and interpretted incorrectly it could seem much more angelic than we had anticipated. So to ensure there was to be no confusion we chose to create it in "distressed blood", giving the overal impression of the title to be much more entiriging than what first meets the eye.



Location














The location for this was much extreamly important in our case, as it was to make or break the realisticness of our film. Although the images above are purely fousing on "28 Days Later" we have drawn out different ideas from a variety of different zombie films, these ones just happened to match our chosen setting the most.
We were very selective with our location because inorder to re-inforce a believable zombie apocolpse setting, we needed out surroundings to be dead. No moving cars, no alive people(apart from our main character). No obvious form of life.


















Also our inside setting needed to be abandoned, showing that perhaps there was people there before, but they have either been killed or fled in fear. Through having a "blank setting" this also draws attention purely to the zombies chasing the our survivor, making it to be more of a dramatic scene, contrasting the silence with the abruption of the zombies' wrath.

Again we have matched and exceeded the conventions of the real media products. Using more than one location, giving out film more of a sense of adventure and action. A great example of another film that does something similar to this, again is "28 Days later". Where the main character is outside, but goes inside seeking refuge however ends up being chased by zombies.



Costume and Props

The costume and props that we used in our zombie film are normally in other zombie films

Sadie's Evaluation- Question 3

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

A Production company is the company that physically develops and produces the films. This company may also be responsible for it's own funding, or in some cases  may accomplish this through a linked- company, business partner, or private investor. It handles the budgeting, scheduling, scripting, staff,  the production itself, post-production, marketing, the distribution and other various things needed in order to make it a success.

The youtube link that is shown above is what my partner and i created as our ident for our company.
An ident is a short visual image associated with a particular production company.




If we were to produce our media product i feel that we would use our production company to develop and distribute it, as it ties in with our chosen genre. It includes blood and thunder both typically dark things, indicating that perhaps the film that has been produced from this might perhaps have a similar theme. I think we might be able to mange this independently however if we couldn't afford to do this we could also partner up with "Lionsgate'' as i believe it to be quite a successful production company, managing well with advertisement and getting the film known, as well as taking in a good income when it comes down to people viewing.

Evaluation Question 7 - Vicky

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











Above, I have embedded both my Preliminary Task and also the final media product; 'Genesis'. This was my first real attempt at using equipment such as the camera and tri-pod, as well as the editing software 'Final Cut Pro'. Naturally, throughout the progression of this task I have learnt a lot of things. This includes things such as planning, shooting, and editing film. From extensive amounts of time spent doing these things, I have improved greatly at using the equipment, and have become very familiar with different elements of the film making process.


Below I have hilighted some issues that are present in my preliminary task, and evidence of improvements that can be seen in the final product.


Issues with Preliminary Task

• Poor titles - I did not fully explore the available features on final cut pro, and due to this I ended up with very simplistic, and unimaginative titles. I do not feel they add anything to the sequence, and I think the lack of motion or any accompanying score leaves them at a low standard.
• Continuity Issues - The tables in the background had been rearranged between shots, meaning the there is a lack of continuity in the final few parts of the sequence
• Editing - I did not take the time to make sure the editing was completely smooth. For example; when Jack is walking through the door and sitting down, the timing in which he takes his bag off does not run smoothly from one shot to another. I should have shortened the clip slightly to make sure it matched perfectly.
• Lack of score - The preliminary task has no kind of score, which adds nothing to the overall experience. I feel I should have experimented with this, as it could have improved it, and I would have also have learned the art of sound editing.
• Sound Levels - Some of the sound levels are too quiet, and should have been adjusted in editing to make sure everything could be heard clearly.

Examples of improvement in final product

• Titles - I took my time when making the titles to explore different effects both on photoshop and final cut pro. Because of this, I was able to edit the font to make it look like running blood, which tied in with the dark themes in the film. I also used an earthquake effect to add movement to the titles, which made it more interesting and gave impact to the title sequence.
• Continuity - I took the time to make sure that the mise en scene was the same in every shot, so there are not issues with continuity
• Editing - I took the time to make sure that the shots were editing smoothly together. I edited shot lengths to the millisecond so that the transitions would run smoothly and there were no bad cuts and repeat of actions in shots.
• Score - In the final product, I made a score to accompany the entire sequence. This was done using soundtrack pro's existing, uncopyrighted music, and also some of our own foley effects. This really added to the overall film, giving an eerie atmosphere and frights in all the right places.
• Sound Levels -  I edited the sound levels in different shots of the film to make them fit in with what was happening on screen, which was very successful in parts.

General skills I have improved on

• During planning and research, I looked into different types of camera shots and what they were used for. I was then able to incorporate this into my final product to give the desired effects in different parts, for example I used a high angle shot to show the girl's apparent vulnerability. The continuity task allowed me to get familiar with the use of camera and tri-pod, which allowed me to set it up safely and strongly for different shots.
• My planning skills also greatly improved after the continuity task. When going into the preliminary task, I had not planned what shots I was going to be, this meant that the process what long and inefficient, and I found myself confused at times. I learnt from this, and when planning the filming for the final product, I wrote up an extensive shot list that included things such as timings, locations and props.
• I also developed better usage of media documents since the continuity task, which helped the organisation and quality of my final product. I learned how to use things such as 'scribd', where I could present a professional looking script and treatment. This was easy to read, and clear to understand, which meant the actors could do their job well. This is a contrast to the preliminary task, where I just wrote down a few notes on paper, which meant there was a lack of direction, hense the poorer quality.
• Since the continuity task, the thing I have most greatly improved on is my knowledge and use of editing software. During the continuity task, I did not fully explore the capabilities of all the different programmes on the mac. This meant that my continuity task was lacking in score, motions, and any sense of spectacle. Whilst in the planning and production stage of the final product, I decided to really try and get to grips with the different programmes. I researched how to do different things and experimented with what I learnt. This enabled me to use different effects on the final product which made it overall more interesting, exciting, and in particular gave more professional looking titles.

Evaluation Question 6 - Vicky

6) What have you learnt about technology from the process of constructing your media product?

Apple Macs 


Throughout the production of my media product, I used Apple iMac computers in order to complete various stages of the process. This was my first in-depth experience of iMac computers, as I had previously been using different variations of the Microsoft operating system both at home, and in my educational studies. At first, I found the use of Macs to be somewhat counter intuitive, but after using them for a while I started to find them somewhat user friendly. I did come across problems with freezing, working not been stored in the right place, and being compatibility issues with work done on other computers, but after much patience and use of online resources for help, I was able to easily overcome these issues.

We used the iMacs in our media production due to the great creative capability associated with the product, which is evident in the wide variety of programmes made for Macs and media production. These products are similar to those used by professionals, which is why the use of them was chosen. Below I have detailed some of the products on Macs, as well as other general equipment used.

Final Cut Pro

We used final cut pro in order to edit and construct our final media product. This programme is a non destructive editing technique, that stores all the orginal footage allowing you to not only edit, but also work backwards and try different things until you are completely happy with the final product. This programme is similar to those used in the industry, although does have it's downfalls and limitations when compared to the top professional products used in film construction.

This programme offers a wide range of effects, titles, transitions, modifications, and general editing abilities. I had little previous experience of the programme, and when using it for a previous task, had not thoroughly explored its capabilities. However, with the use of online tutorials I was able to learn new techniques that would enhance my product. At times this was a struggle, but the benefit to the overall look really outweighed any cons. One example of how I used Final Cut Pro, combined with green screen, was chroma key. This allowed me to change the background of a scene to a news room. This gave our product a sense of realism, and a much more convincing look than what we would have achieved without this editing software. The product also allowed us to go back and make big changes after receiving feedback from the rough cut, and without doing this, our product would have been very poor.

Soundtrack Pro

We used Soundtrack Pro to make the score that would run alongside the visuals in our film. In order to add atmosphere to our product, we had to create and insert music that would be overlaid. We did this using the existing effects and uncopyrighted music and tying different sound clips together. This was made possible with the different tools on the programme, such as cut and stitch. We used a similar technique to make the audio for the news broadcast ident also, which made it seem much more professional. We used this programme as an alternative to the traditional Foley art, and it allowed us to get a quality much more like real media products. Prior to this project, I had little knowledge of Sound Track Pro, and I feel I have learnt a reasonable amount about it, as demonstrated by the above. Admittedly, I did have not used the programme to it's full capabilities, but this is entirely due to the fact that a lot of our audio was diagetic, so we had less need for the programme than if the situation was otherwise.

SLR Camera and Tripod

In order to shoot the footage for our film opening, we used an SLR camera. We decided to use this due to its superior quality over the other cameras that were available to us, as it would produce and much clearer and subsequently more professional looking picture. In order to record, we used an 8gb memory card. This allowed us to shoot a large amount of footage, and meant that if we had to record new footage or rerecord existing video, we would not have to transfer all footage already done onto the computer before hand, or overwrite what we had previously produced. This method of recording is much simpler to the previous method of using physical tapes and reels, and the development of better equipment has been a great positive in the media industry, making tasks easier. Before doing this project I had experience with basic cam-corders, but not SLRs. However, my partner explained the use of the equipment to me, as well as setting up the tri-pod so that it was securely attacked, enabling me to create smooth panning effects. I soon got to grips with the different techniques, eg. Focussing, and the basic functions such as recording were very intuitive.

Sound recorder

We used a sound recorder alongside the video camera, to record all the audio. We did this as back up, just in case the camera was unable to pick up a sufficient level of sound. As well as this, we also recorded our actors making extra zombie sounds, as we had predicted that we would need these in order to overlay them on the footage and elevate the levels of roaring, making it more dramatic and intense. I had no prior use of this equipment, but its usage was incredibly simplistic a button was pressed to both start and stop the recording, and when it came to importing, we simply inserted the SD card into the Mac. I felt using this equipment was a good decision, as we encountered the predicted problems, and the availability of our pre recorded clips allowed us to solve them effectively.

Scribd

I used scribd in order to create my treatment as well as other lengthly posts. I decided to use this tool, as I felt it made the presentation of the blog much neater and easier to read. When using it for the treatment, I felt it gave a more professional look, as well as making the layout cleaner and therefore simpler to comprehend. This benefited us when giving the treatment to our actors as a script, as they were quickly able to scan through and find their parts, meaning everything flowed better. Prior to A/S media, I had not used this programme, but it was incredibly easy to get to grips with and made everything much more efficient and aesthetically pleasing.

Youtube

After we had finished out product, we needed a platform where we were able to publish the film so that it was viewable to our target audience, and we could get feedback. We decided to use Youtube for this, as it was free of charge and had the luxury of options such as being able to embed the video onto our blog. Previous to this project, I had experience of using a youtube account, although this was many years ago. Due to its ever growing popularity and usage, tools available had change, and I found myself having trouble navigation the 'My Account' page. However, it took little time to figure out how to upload and change settings, and I soon had the video available for people to view.

Blogger

I used blogger as a way to record the different steps and stages I went through whilst creating this media product, from the formation of the idea, to this evaluation. By suing this website it helped make the progress of my journey clear, and also helped me to organise all the different things I needed to do in order to succeed. We chose to use blogger as the different features allow you to embed video, sound and image, as well as edit existing post, and change the order of what you've done. I had no experience of this website prior to this, but I found it to be incredibly easy to use and tried all the features.


One thing that I have learnt during this process is that technologies do not necessarily make you more creative and, in fact, can be a hindrance. During planning I can up with a number of ideas that I would have liked to have put into the final product, but when it came to it, was unable to do so. This was either completely, or not to the standard I had hoped for. An example of this would be the titles; I had originally wanted the titles being squashed and spurting blood, as seen in the titles of 'Dawn of The Dead', but I found I was unable to reproduce this with the available editing software. Instead I tried to make the font look as blood like as possible, by shading it with different reds and adding blood splatters - this was done in photoshop. I am pleased with the final effect, but it is not what I had originally hoped for.

Evaluation question 5 - Vicky

5) How did you attract/address your audience?


There are a number of ways in which we attracted our target audience, in in this post I am going to break down exactly how we did it. I will do this by referring to the specific characteristics that make up our target audience, detailed by the previous question. I will then be inserting screen shots alongside each section, to show where in our opening sequence we used these techniques.


Males


Stereotypically, males are said to enjoy lots of actions, both in real life, and also vicariously through film. We have incorporated lots of action and violence in our opening sequence, which is evident from the blood strewn across zombie faces, and our chase scene, which has a quick pace and fast cut editing. We also appealed to males with the use of an attractive female. Research shows that people are more likey to go and see films if one of the main characters has sex appeal. Here we have done this by using a good looking actress as one of the main focuses in the sequence.

15-24 Year Olds


In order to appeal to this age range, we decided to use actors of a similar age when filming - particularly those representing main characters (survivors). All of the characters in the faced pace chase scene (the action also appeals to this age range) are aged between 17 and 18. By using people of this age, the audience will be able to relate to them more easily, as they will understand their behaviour, and also things such as fashion and style.

Isaac, who plays the main zombie, is 17 years old.

Social Class


In order to appeal to the social class D and E we did two things. After researching using the British Film Institute statistical yearbook, we found that this class is more likely to go see films with gore, violence and action. In order to appeal to this, we used these elements in our sequence, which can be shown by things such as a blood strewn bat. We also appealed to this class by using actors and characters who are also of the same class - students. This makes it easier to relate to the characters as they understand their mentalities and idiosyncrasies.

Our zombies are students (social class D/E) who have been infected with the virus.

Nationality


In order to appeal to our british target audience, our film was entirely british. This included the actors, and locations, as well as all the behind the scenes and pre production features such as funding. People have a sense of national pride, and often enjoy purchasing things and experiencing things that are strongly linked with their background and have recognisable features.

All the locations are in England

Zombie Film Fans


In order to appeal to existing zombie film fans, we tried to make our opening sequence similar to other films in this genre, which we hoped would make it look more like a real product. Below are some aspects I considered when producing the film.


Genre Conventions included in the sequence are;

• Has locations both outside and inside, in derelict looking areas
• There is a main protaganist
• The narrative follows the survivors as they escape from zombies, rather seeing it from the zombie POV
• Common iconography and props, eg. fake blood and melee weapons
• Foley effects were used to create footsteps, pounding and roars. Ambiance music was overlaid. 

Music - I used ambiance music from Soundtrack Pro for a lot of the score in our opening sequence. I used this music in order to create an eery feel and add tension to the visuals for a better overall effect. Our target audience enjoys horror and zombie films because of the adrenaline rush and intense frights you can get from them. For this reason, I added the ambiance music in order to heighten this and increase the thrills they would get.

Similaries with other films - As previously stated, our intense research meant we were able to include lots of genre conventions, which we hoped would make our film look more like a real product. However this was not the only reason to include similarities to other films. If a film concept is similar in some ways to a successful, existing product, then you can be sure that there is already a fan base available for it. An example of how we did this is with the female protaganist. This has been seen in the film 'Resident Evil', where 'Alice' is the main character. This would attract fans of this film to our product, in the hope that they would get to experience something similar to a film they already know they enjoy.


Unique Selling Point - Despite our attempts of trying to use conventions for this genre, and also making links with existing products, we wanted our film to have a unique selling point. The way we have done this is by putting more focus on the narrative. Most zombie films follow a strict plot and there is not much deviation. They are more reliant on cliches, gore, and use of cgi for spectacle. Although we did included these things, we wanted to put more effort into the storyline than these pre-existing products. We worked hard to come up with an idea, and created a more complex back story, which was to be referred to, and expanded on throughout the film as a sub plot. We feel that this would help to attract a wider audience - those that already enjoy zombie films, and those that want more from them, and enjoy aspects of mystery and articulate narrative.

Evaluation Question 4 - Vicky

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

Above is a picture of whom we believe is the target audience for our product. We have aimed our product at 15-24 year olds, and we have done so for a number of reasons. Firstly, the main characters in our film (the survivors) are of a similar age, this would make them relatable to our target audience as they would share and understand a number of idiosyncrasies, which makes a film more enjoyable for an audience. Although we are aiming to suit both genders, and feel that horror films have a universal appeal, I do believe that the audience may be slightly biased towards the male gender. The use of an attractive female as a main focus point in the film, will strongly attract a male audience who would like to see the film because of the 'sex appeal' element. As well as this, it is stereotypical that males enjoy more violence and action than females do, which is a strong element of a film such as ours. Having said this, when doing audience research, females also expressed an interest in such themes. Our audience is likely to be social class D/E. This is because of the age range they are in - they are likely to be students and therefore are unlikely to have a well paid job. Not only this, but the characters in the film are also of this class which, again, makes the characters more relatable and therefore makes the overall experience more enjoyable. Relatability also plays a part in the geographic location of our audience - the film is set in the uk, meaning those living there are more likely to go and see it. Our target audience would have a strong interest in the zombie and horror genre, as well as associated things such as gaming, and comic-books, and would look up to, and aspire to be like the heroes from these kinds of films.


We asked our audience what their favourite films were, and their responses were;

• Sean of The Dead
• Saw
• Batman
• 28 Days Later
• The Woman In Black

This supports my previous assumption that they would enjoy our product as all these films have darker themes or gore and violence present in our own film, and some even directly slot into the zombie genre.

After showing them our film we received feedback that confirmed my ideas, and showed me that we had chosen a suitable target audience;

• 'I love the costume and make-up, it looks realistic and gory'
• 'It's fast paced and exciting, I'd want to see what happens next'
• 'It's a great opening'
• 'I'd go and see this if it was in cinemas'

Below is a media profile I had created for a target audience using information from the british film institute statistical year book.

Hiro is a 19 year old, able bodies, male asian, residing in the UK. He is a customer assistant in a comic book store, and spends his spare time engrossed with gaming and graphic novels such as 'The Walking Dead'. He is a student and is studying illustration. Hiro is particularly interesting in the zombie genre due to both his hobbies, and his artistic interest in the use of prosthetics and sylistic representation. 

Below I have print screened images directly from the statistic year book that support my above claims and media profile -

Evaluation Question 3 - Vicky

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

A production company is the company that makes the physical bases for a range of different media products, and in the case of this task, a film. It handles budgeting, scripting, staff, and resources, as well as a number of other necessities needed in order to make a product. It may directly raise funds for the product, or accomplish this through the help from elsewhere, eg. a private investor.

The production company making our film ‘Genesis’, is one owned soley by us – ’13 Productions’, and we have managed the above tasks ourselves. If our film was a real product, we would have to seek help from funding, which would most likely be from somewhere such as the British Film Council. This institution gives out a certain amount of money out each year to small films, eg. ‘Submarine’ in order to help keep British film alive. In order to distribute our film, we would have to go into a partnership with a distribution company who would take the role of creating a buzz for our film, as well as getting it to be released into cinemas and other media platforms so that it could be viewed by the general public.

Ways of distributing films on Prezi

After researching a variety of distributors, I believe that the one that would be most suitable is ‘Film4’. ‘Film4’ would be suitable for a number of reasons, that first being that it is known for its support of british films. Examples of this include ‘Four Lions’ and ‘The Iron Lady’. Our film is based and funded in Britain, with locations and actors also originating from there.  This means our product would fit in with other titles distributed by this company.                                                                                     Secondly, ‘Film4’ is a comparibly small company, and doesn’t product films with huge budgets and a universal audience. It is more known for its support of films that are more reliant on a more artistic style and a new take on narrative. As our film is more reliant on these elements, as well as use of talented costume and make-up, our film is low budget, which ensures that it suits such a company.       Finally, ‘Film4’ has released titles in a similar genre to ours, the most notable being ‘Sean Of The Dead’. Although this film is a ‘Zom Com’ rather than a straight up zombie horror, it still retains a lot of the same mise en scene, visual, and plot. This film being associated with ‘Film4’ makes me more confident that they would want to product and distribute our media product. After the undeniable success of ‘Sean Of The Dead’, they would want to distribute a similar product in the hope that it would also have a similar payback. Although Film4 is not a huge company, it is sufficiently well known to be able to establish links with companies such as iTunes and film on demand. This means that our product could be distributed in these forms, bringing in a great cash return than a small company, although  not as much than if it were distributed by a company such as ‘Universal’.

Sean Of The Dead Distrubtion on Prezi