1. AS Evaluation Sian Ball and Abi Edwards

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products What conventions of Film Openings did you address We used Summit Entertainment as our distribution company due to being known for our genre we have chosen. Sian created a plain production company logo on the movie studio. We called it Sibian Productions which is a mixture of our names Sian and Abi. Within the opening, Sian used an effect to give the plain text a ghostly effect. The first shot of Sian Taylor (our actress) is walking out of her room. This shot is a low angle which focuses on her feet. This is effective because it delays the character being revealed and leaves the audience in suspense. The opening music starts off quite slow but dark and moody. This is effective because it fits in with the footage of the killer drugging the drink and shots of Sian’s feet. Then the music picks up tempo giving a party effect but with a hint of dark and moody atmosphere as well. The way we have represented our generic conventions, we added a scream into the end of the opening and used shots of drugs, ropes, plank of wood etc to create the idea that she had been kidnapped.

3. How does your media product represent your social group? Who is in your film? (Propp-characters roles)We have used three main Propp characters such as princess/lead, villain and false hero. We have represented the princess by using girly outfits and a lot of make-up and letting her drink the spiked drink. The false hero is represented as the friend by the princess meeting the false hero and they acted friendly with each other and the friend gives her the drink that was spiked. The killer’s representation is used by footage of him drugging the drink, wearing a hoodie with the hood up to hide the face. Some see friends as “back stabbers” which we added into our video. The friend acts friendly then gives her the drink with the drugs in but when the princess is feeling the effects of the drug, she changes her opinion about her.

4. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? Our media institution company is Summit Entertainment, we chose this because they have created other movies with the same kind of genre as ours and this makes them ideal. Some other films Summit Entertainment have made include; Sorority row, Twilight, Knowing and Furry vengeance A film distribution company distributes the movie to a wider audience and helps promote the movie. They also provide the budget for a movie so they can afford better actors and settings etc. If we were to distribute our product we would use somebody like Universal as they have a high budget and would be able to promote our movie well. We would advertise it by using posters, adverts, trailers etc. We would also be able to buy better and more well known actors so these could also help promote the movie due to their popularity. Also having a high budget would be able to improve the quality of our movie because we could use better equipment and also have better props and settings.

5. Who would be the audience for your media product? The audience we have chosen would be quite specific and we have created checklists on what we think they would generally be like. Demographic checklist age: 15 and above Gender: mainly girls but some boys Profession: Probably student Education level: college or school Psychographic Socially conscious Fun-loving Cutting edge Fashion Conscious Trend Follower Enjoys movies

6. How did you attract your audience? We used music that would fit the genre but had a party feel to it to create a party atmosphere. We based the film on what can happen at parties, so the film has a message within it to be careful when drinking and to always watch your drink. We chose to change our idea slightly and re-film because our first attempt didn’t capture the narrative we wanted. We changed our plotline slightly so it made more sense to the audience but still created an enigma code so they wanted to keep watching. Barthes: we created an enigma code at the end of our movie and this makes the audience want to carry on watching. Todorov: equilibrium theory –our equilibrium is our opening party scene and our disequilibrium is when we hear the scream and the blackout, this would then lead to a new equilibrium. Propp: Character RolesPrincess – Sian TaylorFalse Hero – Abi EdwardsVillan – Sarah Sygrove

7. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? We have learnt that everything within a film is not there by accident and is thought about carefully. Music is difficult to find, especially trying to make it fit in with the genre. We had to think carefully about everything we put in a shot like the pictures below show that we thought about what a party would like and created mise-en-scene to suit this. We also thought about how the car would look if we had the shadow of out villain in it. We also learnt about using different equipment like Corel video studio as editing, we also learnt about using different cameras as we had to re-film things a couple of times.

8. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product Sian Ball I have learnt that planning needs to be done carefully due to time can slip away. Also, needing to make filming the priority and getting it done early so if extra filming is needed it can be done quickly. Looking back at the preliminary, I can see how we progressed. With our practical, we were more daring with the equipment. For example, we used a lot of different shots in our practical compared with our preliminary which we only used basic shots. The special effects and editing have improved quite a bit as the titles in the prelim were basic and white, then in our film the titles glow and split as they leave the screen. This task was quite challenging. With the filming, it was one problem after another. For example, we would film the scene, thinking we’ve done alright then edit it altogether; it would turn out to not work as well as we thought it would. When we finished our first film we decided to re-film everything within the space of three weeks. I’m please we decided to re-film as our new film was a hundred times better and made a lot more sense as our old film did not capture what we were trying to portray very well. We struggled with music as nothing would fit in with what is happening on the screen. It did not capture the mood correctly but we finally manage to find music which was perfect. We tried to have party feel but at the same time try to be dark and moody. Editing was quite easy on the second time round as things were planned more carefully and the shots melted together smoothly.

9. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product Abi Edwards I have learnt that we need to put lots of time into planning every little bit of what we are going to do otherwise we will end up having to re-film because we have missed bits. I also learnt that music takes lots of time to find as it took days to find something we could use. Looking back on my preliminary I find that the level of my work has improved and am I much more proud of it. I think that most of the filming and things went well apart from when we couldn’t find lifts to possible locations for settings, this made things difficult so we had to change the idea to somewhere where we did not have to go far too. This change ended up working well for the movie as it created a better narrative and it is now easier to understand what’s happening. It also helps create the enigma code when we have put the scream in at the end to help make the audience want to keep watching, I think this works very well in doing this as when the car boot is closed and there is a scream and then our title ‘snatched’ comes up the audience feels they need to find out who took her and why, this ends our opening and creates a good cliff hanger or enigma code. I think I have progressed well since starting the course and doing my preliminary and have learnt how to use lots of new technologies and how much work goes into filming a movie. I have also learnt that I need to time manage well otherwise will never get anything done and time will slip away quickly. I also learnt that you have to work as a team to get things done. And have learnt to not rely on other people because an actor may let you down and then you are behind, this happened to us but we managed to finish still using a different actress and myself being in a little part of it. Overall I think the project went very well and I have progressed a lot since my preliminary task.