Evaluation question 3

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

Whilst researching into possible companies which may want to distribute our film I discovered Bounty Films. Bounty films are a good example of a company that would possibly want to distribute our film. Bounty films deal in small and independent films that are made on a low budget.

On the basis that our film is made on a low budget, and uses unknown actors, there would be no interest from huge production/distribution companies to have involvement in our film. It’s the first film and not a sequel, so there is no previous evidence or sales figures to go on, or to attract any investors. Bounty films specialise in small movies (that can sometimes be controversial) such as the human centipede.

Any small distribution company may be interested in our movie, as its fairly low risk involved in distributing it. Bounty films do specialise in the zombie/horror genre of distribution, and if the film sold well, would do the same for any sequels made (as they distributed the human centipede 1 + 2). Our company name of “dead cell productions” tried to fit in with the codes/conventions of the horror theme, both in its naming and its design.

Evaluation question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The main character in our media production is named Alex mason. He is the survivor in a zombie apocalypse and works for a chemical company that created a cure for the disease that is turning people into “zombies”. The character that he represents and is compared to is Robert Neville (played by Will Smith) the leading role in the film I Am Legend.

Robert Neville: The character in I Am Legend is the supposed to be the last survivor on earth after the “infection”. He travels alone and carries with him just his gun and his dog for company. He wears just simply light clothing, a t shirt, open shirt and jeans. This character is very strong and independent, since he has nobody to take orders from; he is his own man and can do what he wants. He is very intelligent and is able to know when the infected come out, what to do and how to survive in the post apocalyptic world. The city that he is in is completely uninhabited and he is the only survivor.

Alex Mason: Our character is similar to Robert in many ways. He is also intelligent and knows how to handle his environment. The key difference in the two stories is that in our film, the zombie apocalypse is fairly premature, whereas in I Am Legend the world has been post apocalyptic for years. Alex doesn’t carry any guns or weapons, he works for a chemical company and his strong point is his mind. As you can see from the screen grabs below, the characters are dressed in a similar way. Both Alex and Robert have the whole storyline of the films based around them, with very little interaction with other characters.

Evaluation Question 1

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

Our media product develops the conventions of a general Horror movie opening. When thinking about the genre we were targeting we noticed that there were various long/close-ups but not many medium shots. Looking at the screen grabs from 9 different points in our film I would say that it is quite typical of a horror movie opening. Close ups seen in shots 2 and 4 show the characters expression – vital for telling the audience what they are feeling – this is a big part of thriller/horror films.

Long shots take up most of the screen grabs; this sets the scene and shows the location. The background and set is vital for this genre and this is why long shots are so important, spacious sets leave room for the character to move freely and any other characters to enter; since it is so open it also leaves a lot of room for sudden things to happen which builds tension, as you can see our set location is also in a wide area which is again typical of a horror movie.

Although it is set in the conventional place, the lighting challenges what is normally considered of a horror movie during shots 7 and 8 since we film out in the open, normally the lighting is dim; dark to make the mood eerie. This isn’t a problem though, because for the start of the film our character is seen running through a forested area which means the lighting will be naturally low.

The titles for the first and last screen grabs are made up of blacks, whites and reds; complimenting the horror theme because these are colours seen often, the audience will relate these colours to the genre and will give them an idea right from the start of what they should expect.
By using the normal conventions of a horror movie this should help the film to sell well, it is within the audiences’ expectations and therefore pleasing. However there are enough ideas about the opening to make it original so that it will not become boring and predictable.

I have recorded myself using 'CamStudio' to show me using Adobe Premiere Pro. The clip is of me importing a clip so that I could use it on the timeline for the film. Although APP is simple for importing and has a simple timeline, we have found that it is slow running, crashes often and is generally difficult to use. I would not suggest this programme to others wanting to create a clip longer than 5 minutes unless their computer runs smoothly without fault.

Editing

For the past few days I have been completing editing together the clips that we have filmed into the final peice. I have decided to do the editing out of the group (although I will receive feedback and critisism from the rest of the group) since I have had experience with using Adobe Premiere Pro before. Although Premiere Pro can be difficult at times, it is good for editing because the timeline is laid out simply and importing clips is easy to do.

This video gives you an idea of what it looks like, and gives some useful tips.

Email for music

Since we are using music in our film, we needed to email the band manager of the song we chose to make sure that we did not go against any copyright terms that might be in place, Curtis sent an email to make sure that this was okay.
Since they did not reply (we said they did not have to reply if allowed to use the song) we are okay to add it into the film.

Make-up

I decided to test out what the make-up would look like for the zombies in our film, instead of using face-paint I decided to use Acrylic paint because you can build up layers to make texture, which you cannot do with face make-up. Using three different colours of red (I may use more when doing it for the final) I painted what would perhaps be a bite mark onto the side of my neck. This is only a practice to see how using Acrylic would go; it is good, but does peel fairly quickly so we would perhaps have to keep re-applying it if the scenes go on for too long.