Evaluation of Finished Film

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film intro starts with our main protagonist Matt who is a stereotypical male in many ways. For instance the first couple of seconds starts with him getting ready for work. This is a very quick process and it is clear he doesn't take much pride in h

is appearance when getting ready for work. It is also clear he is the breadwinner of the two as he earns the money while his flat mate is lazying around on the couch. As the main protagonist and the flatmate are around the ages of 20 to 25 this is the type of age we are representing in our film. It is apparent that there are two types of males and social groups in our film that both fit the stereotype. As Matt asked the flatmate did he have a good night it is clear that he is a outgoing type of male where as Matt is a go getter in the work place. This shows that we are aiming our film at males of all kinds and different social groups within males. This seems to narrow down the type of audience we are trying to represent as this type of behavior can also be seen in women just as much as men as in this day and age some women work to keep men.

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

We feel our film should be distributed by a company such as WT² Productions or Working Title as they distributed Shaun of the Dead, which is one of the films we have based ours on. Working Title is a British film company based in London and was founded in 1983. WT² Productions was then founded in 1999 and are an independent film company based in London who deal with low budget films. As our film contains similar aspects such as gore and zombies like Shaun of the Dead,this would be an ideal company. As Shaun of the Dead was aimed at males around the age of 15 to 25 they advertised their film in pubs and also on underground trains that run through London. We want our film to be advertised via Facebook and other social networking sites, as the majority of the audience we are aiming for use these on a regular basis. Such aspects like the film trailer or sound clips could be played inside bars/pubs as this is and ideal place to reach our audience. Posters could also be displayed on buses or at bus stops as this is also a regular form of transport for people in our age range. After the film has been released a TV channel such as Film4 or Channel 4 would be more suitable to premiere the movie and show it on a regular basis as it attracts a younger audience than other channels. It has has seasons which focus on a particular genre so our film could be included in an apocolypse season. Also our film is rated 15 and contains alot of adult material so it would have to be shown after 9pm. Film4 sometims edits films so they are able to be shown on TV, howver we don't feel this would be necassary.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

As the genre of our media product is an apocalypse thriller, we think this appeals more to males around the age of 15-25. As we have based our film on Shaun of the Dead which has a rating of 15 of and 28 Days Later which is rated an 18 we feel this would be a suit

able age range. Zombie and apocalypse thrillers have always attracted a large audience as people

have been entertained by this type of genre because it doesn't happen in real life. At the beginning of our intro it starts with a typical young man waking up for what seems a long day at work. This p

art of the film w

ould appeal to any gender as p

eople can relate to this, but as the film progresses there is a scene in which the audience sees Matt's flatmate's decaying hand. This would appeal to males more than f

emales because it is more gorey. Females are stereotypically more likely to watch rom

antic comedies, however they

would also watch this type of genre because it's a thriller. This film wold appeal to females to as the audience don't know if there will be a love interest or even women in the cast. In 28 Days later the main protagonist is rescued by a women and later on in the film a teenage girl appears. Towards the end of our intro Matt see's a womens figure in the distance but the audience is left asking whether its his imagination or if she is real. They also are sometimes the target audience for more films that are based on women in horror movies but since this film has got a male protagonist and not isn't very womanly., we can't really have our target audience as women but that is from the stereotypical view. Kids are also not really targeted especially since the age to be able to watch it is 15 and over, but it is known that people under that age will somehow be able to watch that film, which we're aware of, but this is all down to the parents and the distributor.

How did you attract/address your audience?

The genre is a zombie apocalypse thriller, but in the first few scenes the audience wont realize this especially with him doing day to day processes such as getting ready for work and the upbeat mu

sic that goes along with it. This c

ould relate to older males as he doesn't look delighted about getting up for work at 7 as does any body else. However when he speaks to his flat mate, thi

ngs being more apparent somethi

ng is wrong but he doesn't come to realize this as the zombie hand appears after he left which adds the thriller part of the genre and creates more tension as the audience know but the main protagonist doesn't. We think this adds more of a unique element instead of it jut being apparent throughout. The audience were trying to attract is males from around the age of 15 to 25. This isn't a very big age range but there is a variety of things that attract this audience and age range. For example the horror and gore that some stereotypical males like. The intros name being 'Memoirs of a Survivor' is distinctive against other horror films. This implies that is it going to be from one perspective, which is going to be Matt. This will make it much more more easier to follow rather than a complicated story line. We could of used more urban and up to date music but we feel the music adds to the thriller part as it starts off upbeat and then beings to go eerie. This music attracts an older age range. The locations we used are very urban which makes it more realistic and present so people can relate to it more than if it was just in the country side where not a lot of people live. The end of the opening finishes with the audience not knowing whether the person Matt is running after is just his imagination or the only other person on the earth.

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

Before starting this task hardly any of our group had any experience of using any kind of filming equipment and although this was a bit of a disadvantage for us we overcome this. At the beginn-

ing of our film on our first shoot we didn't use a tripod which was a disadvantage agai-

n. So we felt we should re-film to gain full advantage of the equipment that was offered to us. The reshoot looked miles better, we felt me made a good decision. Final Cut Pro took a lot of

time to get used to but we managed it quite well. It helped us to have good continuity throughout. For instance when we added the music to the film as there is dialog outside the wind interrupted the music so we had to record the dialog again separately and then bit by bit add the dialog over the music which was quite a hassle as we didn't expect this to happen. Adding fades to the getting ready for work scenes instantly made it more interesting and also added a bit of elliptical editing. This made us more confident when filming for instance we first shot matt just walking down the stairs but on a reshoot we added the close up of his feet on the stairs and a close up if his hand of the banister which inst

antly made it

more professional. In our original plan we were going to film in Manchester City Centre but we felt Salford Queys wou

ld look a lot urban and relate to the audience more.We feel we have an advantage on the location side Manchester has a lot of old and new buildings which could appeal to not just the youths of today as we are aiming for but also the older generation. When looking back at our film we probably could of added more location shots to reinforce the idea of Matt being on his own.

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

From the preliminInNCEWDtask we have learnt how to plan ahead and write down our ideas down and work with that when filming. For our main task we wrote down our ideas, and from there we discussed what we want do and have in the film introduction. We worked with what tools we can and a lot has been changed since the original idea. For instance we first thought that Matt Molnar would be the main protagonist, but then it made more sense that Matt Taylor would act because we were using his house. We were able to use more advanced techniques on our main task as well, for instance on the prelim there camera work was unsteady and the lighting was off which would of distracted the audience. This lead us to use the tripod throughout filming on the main task. From the preliminary task we have learnt how to film more efficiently with the camera and we were able to add more interesting shots to our main task such as close ups, over the shoulder shots and also followed the 180 degree rule. Also, the use of final cut pro has massively improved since when we were doing the preliminary task, because we used a lot more tools. For instance in our prelim task we only used the 'mark in, mark out' tool and in the main task we have used the fade effect which made the first few scenes of Matt getting ready for work a lot more interesting and professional. We added sound into our intro to make it look like a usual da

y at the beginning and then it became apparent there was something wrong when the eerie music starts this created tension rather than just diagetic sounds all the way through which would gave us a lot more understanding when using Final Cut Pro. From the beginning and planning of the film we were originally going to do a straight mid shoot of Matt walking down the stairs but after outside opinion we felt this was quite stale. So we decided to take the idea of doing a close up of Matts foot on the stairs to make it more professional so we did this and feel it has improved it.