Sunday 13 March 2011

Evaluation Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
In the process of constructing the product I have learnt many things as it was a new experience for me educationally and personally as I've never been involved in any filming. In production, the camera we used was a Canon Legria HD, this was especially effective for our torture scenes as it provided us with the ability to capture detail when filming close up in difficult lighting. One problem that we did face however, was the use of the dolly when filming the protagonist walking on the pavements, this produced an unsteady video which blurred and shaked when we tested it so we decided not to use it and instead walked alongside the protagonist.
Once we had filmed all our scenes we used Final Cut Express on the Apple iMac to edit all of our footage and put together our product. It was my first time using any editing software, so it was a new experience. I believed I picked it up quickly and can say that I can use a variety of the a editing tools competently. To create our soundtrack we used GarageBand, again this was a new experience, much of which was trial and error and although it was quite time consuming I managed to acquire the skill to use it effectively and spot certain sounds that created suspense and tension which was a much needed factor for our product.

Evaluation Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

How did you attract/address your audience?
Captivitys main convention is a psychological thriller. This helped us attract our targeted audience as this sub-genre is is very popular amongst our selected age group. Within this favoured sub-genre we felt that it had to raise questions which created suspense and tension, so we used Roland Barthes theory of action and enigma codes. He believed that in order to create suspense and tension there had to be unanswered questions, so with this in mind we have made our protagonist appear to be randomly kidknapped and have left our capturers face hidden, all to be revealed later on in the film.

Many thriller movies use the beginning of the movie to establish the genre and we have done this through the use of dark colours for our production companies. The shots used also help to build a sense of tension and heighten the suspense; not being able to see the character's face creates a sense of ambiguity and the point of view shots allow the audience to position themselves in the character's shoes which helps them to engage more in the narrative. The low lighting is a key feature, intensifying the atmosphere whilst still complying to the conventions of the thriller genre.
The change in music, which becomes increasingly dramatic as the title appears, puts more emphasis upon it.

Evaluation Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Who would be the audience for your media product?
The target audience for our media product would be 18+, this is due to the torture scenes as they breach the 15 certificate "Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury". A possible problem of releasing it as an 18+ is that we are cutting the teenage market audience which could impact us negatively as this genre is favoured highly by teenagers, but on the other hand, films that are similar to ours such as "Law Abiding Citizen" have done very well with an 18+ certificate even though it was distributed on a much larger scale the principle remains the same.

Evaluation Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?