Evaluation - Draft from plan

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

• Conventions - Blood, zombies (monsters), guns/weapons, fast paced flashes and events, news reports explaining what has happened, dark atmosphere/low-key lighting, harmonious and dark, fast paced music graveyards, collapsed buildings and wasteland, survivors, graffiti, gory FX
• Blood (red food coloring), zombies (someone with a hood), toy guns and broom handles, flashes (used a lot to explain what has happened in a short amount of time), filmed at night and all shots including day converted to black and white, music developed on garageband and harmonious music is very sorrowful and juxtaposes the faster pace that follows, graveyard featured at the start of the pan to show that death has arrived swiftly as title that is over it says two weeks later, wasteland and collapsed buildings add to the apocalyptic feel, zombie films always have people who are yet to be infected, graffiti shows that all hell has broke loose and there is no order or law enforcement, used to show wounds and effects of the spore and sound used to give the effect of a deadly blow
• Yes as it is a zombie horror and we have used survivors, weapons, gore, zombies, a wasteland
• See references
  

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

• We tried to make it reach as many people as possible by making characters from different walks of life and by using a mixture of instruments and genres to make the music
• Everyone is equal in a time of worldwide crisis people work together instead of every little squabble still taking place
• Target audience is 15 going off the BBFC so minimal amount of gore and swearing used and characters are designed to relatable to different teenagers
  

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

• This is something that wouldn’t be produced by Hollywood as it doesn’t need the production value of a Hollywood film and would be made in England with English production values due to the low amount of SFX needed. Such  English films include Colin which cost £45 to make
• It would be a TV movie and shown on maybe SCI-FI, ZoneHorror or five
  
• It would be released for the horror film boom around Halloween time but it wouldn’t offer an opportunity for any form of merchandise or franchise
  
• This is through the use of low key lighting and gore

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

• See BBFC 15 Rating
• See references

5.  How did you attract/address your audience?

• 15+ due to content and horrors are usually this rating or higher. Horrors are popular between teens to late 20s and zombie films tend to be more popular with males
  
• There aren’t any moments that would terrify the audience as our opening sequence is only meant to set the events of the film into motion
  
• POV to put the audience in the shoes of the first zombie and one of the survivors. Showing the various stages of the mutation first hand through numerous shots mainly close ups allowing the viewer to experience the changes first hand
  
• They are being asked to put themselves in the shoes of both the survivors and zombies and are allowed to watch everything that has happened to the world due to the spores effects
  
• Gives the viewer a more in-depth feel to the storyline and the emotions the characters
  
• We are following the generic conventions by showing the mutation allowing us to use special effects to show gore etc. one of the suspenseful moments was when the survivors are being attacked by the zombie. Another is when the mutation occurs and the zombie attacks the girl
  
• Get from Facebook etc.

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

• Strengths of Camera equipment:-

1. Good quality camera which produced high quality video and sound
2. The tripod was very sturdy and secure
3. All of the equipment was easy to use
4. the green screen equipment worked very well and was also easy to use

• Weaknesses of Camera equipment:-

1. There were different makes of cameras so you had to make sure you had the right camera as different ones had different settings and effects
2. The camera recorded onto tape which takes longer to import and doesn't hold as much data as a hard drive or memory card camera

• We found that due to us using small commercial cameras we were unable to get rid of the wind sound as we didn’t have access to a boom mic and cover and this picked the wind up. Also we found that it is hard to film in public places as people would walk near and in one case we had the sound of a motorbike get caught in the shot. In most cases we just reshot the shot straight after and asked anyone nearby if they would mind going a different way or moving away while we filmed
  
• The only new technology we used was the green screen in the media studio however we experimented with it to begin with to see what we could potentially use and we decided how to use it from there
  
• There were several effects built into imovie that where useful to make the video and these where…. These proved to be useful as they where effects that could not be made by using the camera and would be hard to try to create otherwise the … effect was good at making the image look pixilated and was a helping factor as this saves a lot of work however it also had to be run through Photoshop to make the image how we wished. Garageband was a useful piece of software as instead of hiring a person to make a sound track we could decide on how we wanted it to sound with compliance and reference to the movie once finished as originally we didn’t know originally what kind of sound track we wanted but by listing to the sound loops and changing pitches we found the right one which helps create a more tense piece (put before and after on prezi)(WITH SOUND AND WITHOUT!)
  

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

• We found that by planning and drawing up an animatic we were able to ensure that we could make sure that the opening sequence was of a higher quality than our preliminary task which was honestly terrible mainly due to inexperience of the filmmaking process and we were also able to decide on what subgenre of horror we wanted to use and what sort of monster or killer we wanted to use and at the same time formulate a viable plot
  
• We were able to use wider use variety of shots thanks to us deciding to do a zombie film
  
• We all feel more confident with the equipment as we have had more time to work with the equipment we were provided with and feel that it has been very useful in helping us to understand the filmmaking process and at the same time formulate ideas with what is available to us wherever and whenever we are filming
  
• We feel that we have done the best that we could to fill the brief and we feel we are as close to the brief as we can be