Evaluation

E V A L U A T I O N

of

C R Y S T A L L I NE

By Rosie Wishart

C R Y S T A L L I NE

In my media product, the opening sequence of a film. I have aimed for

the audience to be able to establish the genre of the film within the two

minutes shown. As the genre of my film is a psychological thriller, I

researched into generic conventions within films for this genre,to then

decide how I would use/develop or challenge them in my media product.

Looking at the forms and

conventions used in similar genre

films.

Q1 - in what ways does

your Media product use,

develop or challenge

forms and conventions of

real media products?

CONVENTIONS - for

example, a Thriller film you

would normally find that it

follows certain 'conventions'

such as suspense, climax

etc.

C R Y S T A L L I NE Looking at the forms and

conventions used in similar genre

films.

Q1 - in what ways does

your Media product use,

develop or challenge

forms and conventions of

real media products?

I found that the setting played a part of

the audience being able to establish the

genre and also that it is a important

convention used in any horror/thriller

piece.

An example of this was

Insomnia directed by Christopher

Nolan, the opening shows you a birds

eye view of snowy mountains, making it

seem quite, alone and along with the

music extremely creepy allowing the

audience to identify the genre quickly

and clearly. I chose to use this

Setting

Use

Using the idea of having setting as a main signifier, we used the woods for our setting as typically horror/thriller

films are linked with woods.

C R Y S T A L L I NE Looking at the forms and

conventions used in similar genre

films.

Q1 - in what ways does

your Media product use,

develop or challenge

forms and conventions of

real media products?Sound

Develop

Instead of having one sound/tune play throughout, we chose to have sound as a signifier within itself having a change of

sound with a change of person/mood/place.

Another important convention I found was

sound/music a prime example of this is Hard

Candy, directed by David Slade. The music used in

the opening is of a dainty piano playing quite a

innocent tune yet it sounds as if it has a dark twist

on it. The opening was extremely empty and no

other conventions were of immediate use only

music, and it was still clear what the genre of

the film was, proving music is of great use to

establish the genre, I chose to develop this.

C R Y S T A L L I NE

Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill was one of the films that we looked into, the convention used in the

opening of the film is character. As the scene opens with a black screen and the diegetic sound of a

woman breathing heavily, in black and white, as the woman is the only person we see, we

immediately know she is themain character, making the audience wonder what happened to her and

wanting to know more I chose to develop and use this convention. The convention of character was

hard to develop and use in my media product because we had one actress, one character but with

two different personalities and in order to show both sides clearly in the media product we

developed the idea of costume, as in Kill Bill she is wearing a wedding dress we, the audience know

that it is something to do with a wedding so we chose to develop this idea and show the different

sides of our character through costume. (As shown on the next slide).

Looking at the forms and

conventions used in similar genre

films.

Q1 - in what ways does

your Media product use,

develop or challenge

forms and conventions of

real media products?

C R Y S T A L L I NE Looking at the forms and

conventions used in similar genre

films.

Q1 - in what ways does

your Media product use,

develop or challenge

forms and conventions of

real media products?Character

Develop/Use

We used the idea of having our main character at the beginning of the film opening, but we challenged it by having our character have a greater meaning by what she was wearing symbolising personality.

As our character was shown as two along with

music we wanted to make it clear for the audience

when it had changed from one side to the other we

did this through costume as well

This is the innocent side of our

Character Amanda, in contrast to the

twisted side she is wearing lighter

clothes in stead of all black.

In this picture the

costume we chose

was all black to

show the dark side

of Amanda’s

personality.

C R Y S T A L L I NEQ2 - How does your media

product represent

particular social groups?

In my media product, there is only young woman. Typically in

thriller/horror films, females are shown as hypersexual damsels in

distress who are usually murdered within the first five minutes.

We don’t show a distinct representation of a particular social group,

but we do show age in negative way due to her insanity caused

from drugs.

We represent our characters as middle class educated young

women you can tell this by their accent when they talk, and also

the mise en scene for example one of our scenes are set at a

school.

C R Y S T A L L I NEQ3 - What kind of Media

Institution might distribute

your Media Product and

Why?

The distribution company I used for my film is

Momentum Pictures.

Why I chose Momentum Pictures.

Momentum Pictures is one of the leading independent motion picture distributors in the UK

and Ireland. Extremely well known and popular.

Has been the distribution company for films with similar

genre e.g. The Crazies and Insidious.

Have also been the distribution company for films with a similar age group e.g.

The Woman in Black and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

We used Hammer Films as our production company and

Momentum and Hammer have got a few films together

of the same genre.

In 2011 won 8 baftas, still being used and doing well .

C R Y S T A L L I NEQ3 - What kind of Media

Institution might distribute

your Media Product and

Why?

The distribution company I used for my film is

Momentum Pictures.

What is a distribution company?

• A company/individual responsible for the marketing of the film, can set the realease date also the method which the film will be available by i.e. directly to the public either theatrically or for home viewing on DVD etc.

How would my film be available for

viewing and why?

• The platform my film would be distributed on would be a cinema, then DVD because from the research I did I found that 13 out of 20 people I asked would watch it at the cinema first/prefer to watch it at the cinema.

C R Y S T A L L I NEQ3 - What kind of Media

Institution might distribute

your Media Product and

Why?

The distribution company I used for my film is

Momentum Pictures.

Multiplex or Art House Movie?

• Art house movies are shown to a niche market (a specialised audience to a specific audience) instead of a mass scale audience. A certain degree of knowledge is needed to be able to appreciate or understand a art house movie and they are normally shown a few times in specialty theatres. They say they are the extreme opposite of a blockbuster movie, as they do not strive to entertain, as the audience should strive to understand such movies. Our media product is more likely to be shown at local multiplex's where its cheap for young people and even though our target audience is young adults we want it to be appealing and open for a mass scale audience. Also the knowledge required to watch a art house movie is unlikely to be found in a young adult, our media product in my opinion is a blockbuster and is there to entertain and the only strive within our media product is to be a mainstream entertaining appealing blockbuster.

C R Y S T A L L I NEQ4 - who would the

audience for your media

product?

Our target audience for our media product is young

adults/teenagers. The age certificate for our film is

15 as films under this age category according to the BBFC

(The British Board of Film Classification) claim it can contain

'adult themes, hard drugs, strong language, strong violence

and strong sex references and nudity without graphic detail

and sexual activity may be portrayed but without any strong

detail. Sexual violence may be shown if discreet and justified

by context.' This is the perfect age for our film because of the

drugs, there would be swearing in it and also we have the

theme of rape in it so there would we sex references and

possibly discreet sexual violence.

The genre of our film is a psychological thriller about a young

girl of 16. To make our film more appealing we took all

conventions that would be appealing to our target of young

demographic. Another reason this is our target audience is

because we have drug related consequences within our

C R Y S T A L L I NEQ4 - who would the

audience for your media

product?

Firstly lifestyle, our media product is about a young woman who gets too involved

with all the wrong things i.e. parties, drugs and older boys three of which are all

parts of a teenage girls lifestyle some vary and some more than others. To appeal to

our target audience and to make sure that the part of the lifestyle of our character is

shown we used fashion and setting, using clothes that are deemed fashionable

today appeals to our target audience and having part of it set at a school helps them

to be able to relate to our character age wise as well as the lifestyle of attending

sixth form with all the distractions. We also have knife shown in our piece and as

young knife crime is a issue today in society, for audience it would emphasis the

age group involved.

The music used throughout our piece created on garage band is a mix of trance,

rock, bass and percussion all of which are popular in our target audience age group.

We chose to use all the different types of music to interest our audience and to make

it more interesting and appeal to a wider group instead of having none or one piece

of music throughout.

C R Y S T A L L I NEQ4 – who would the

audience for your product

be?When researching into similar films, we looked at the target audience

of each and what audience enjoys them the most. Donnie Darko by

Richard Kelly is about A troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a

large bunny rabbit that manipulates him to commit a series of crimes,

after narrowly escaping a bizarre accident. The film is rated 15

and after doing some research I found that 16 people that I asked

had watched it and 8 of them said its in there top three favorite

movies so I decided to do some online research into reviews, one girl

aged 15 said 'this movie was thought-provoking, unique, and mind-

bending’ which is the exact reaction we want from our media product

so we made sure we made ours similar to Donnie Darko.

C R Y S T A L L I NEQuestion 5 - how did

you attract/address your

audience?In our media product as explained in previous slides, we used

a few conventions to attract and address our audience

for example the age of our character, using a character that is

roughly the same age as our target audience appeals to the

audience and attracts them as they can relate to some on the

lifestyle of the character and would want to see how someone

the same age is shown and represented and how they live

their life. Another way we do this I music as I said in question 4

we used a range of different types of music all of which are

popular with the target audience we found out in research

which appeals and attracts the audience.

C R Y S T A L L I NEQuestion 7 –Looking back at the preliminary

task, what do you feel you have learnt from it

to the full product?

Looking back at all the work I have done in the process of creating

my full product, I have learnt many skills. When making my film

opening I used many of skills I had learnt in the process to make

my film the best it could possibly be, due to the software I had

learnt to use I was able to make my full product look professional

and able to get rid of any shots that were not needed making it run

smoothly.

When I did the continuity exercise I learnt about the 360 degree

rule, which taught me I had to make a line to make sure that my

film was continuous and to further make it run smoothly.