Hello welcome to my blog. I am currently studying AS media and we are studying Slasher Films .My blog contains records of background ,planning and research leading up to the production of our final slasher film Red Christmas which will be a take on Black X mas Slasher. Thanks ! :)

Monday 6 May 2013

Evaluation Question 1

In what ways does your media product use,develop or change forms and conventions of real media products?




Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups ?



The characters in red christmas are 17. These characters are all girls they are all classic girly girls all with long hair makeup and fashionable.The final girl (who gets killed first) is highlighted by wearing a long coat and no revealing clothing and little makeup where as the final girl is wearing a skirt and tights. The other girls are wearing normal clothes that wouldn't stand out compared to these too outfits.This also relates to the teenage theme as teens can relate to there lives.In the mis en scene there is nothing to suggest a particular social group. 

The girls are suppose to be carol singers so quite naive and are raising money to what the final girl put them up to. All teens are stereo types as english teens with mid class- upper class due to the area it is set and the designer clothing and accent. There for the social group this would be aimed at is mid class teens as they can relate most to these girls and there lives . this is also why we gave our film a rating of 15.





Evaluation Question 3

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

The distribution of a film (or movie) is the process through which a movie is made available to watch for an audience by a film distributor. This task may be accomplished in a variety of ways; for example, with a theatrical release, a home entertainment release (in which the movie is made available on DVD-video or Blu-ray Disc) .Film industry covers three areas. PRODUCTION (most film projects never make it out of 'development hell') DISTRIBUTION (most UK films fail to attract a distributor willing to take the risk) EXHIBITION (the vast majority of UK films fail to get a box office release; Hollywood dominates)

    
   Distribution is changing as now there is such thing as digitilisation which is now used Digitization is the process of changing content production, storage, distribution, and consumption from an analog to a digital base. Its most important characteristic is that it changes these bases from physical form to binary electronic form.This has such an impact as it largely reduces costs dramatically as everything is done digitally. This has an impact on distribution as now there is no need for any.Although these changes had some effects on media businesses in the first two to three decades of digitization, the business models of media remained relatively stable because newspapers, magazines, and books continued to be printed on paper, recording of audio and video for retail distribution remained as a physical good, and all these types of products continued to be distributed and sold in traditional ways. There for there are a lot more opportunity  for self distribution due to low costs of digitalisation being so cheap.

    The basic context of our film is the idea of festive season and having a killer santa. However having a stalking scene which is different to our main film influence black x mas wewill call our movie Red christmas and have intertextuality throughout with black x mas and scream.My genre for my film is a slasher genre and will be a micro budget film as we have no stars  however we do have similarities to franchises and other slashers films such as Scream , Halloween , Black x mas and Prom Night .  our film is similar as it has same basic content such as the idea of the classic killer and the typical scream queen and final girl. Our film is obviously not going to be a high budget film but a micro budget as we will not have distributers and little cash.

 all these are 2012 films i used search ' top 2012 films into google to search for these and used the website top films of 2012 and imdb to find film information.
     The marketing tools needed for distribution in slasher films are posters , trailers , teaser trailers, advertisements on TV magazines etc websites and social networking. an example of this would be scream. I would budget our film at £30 to make as we already have everything we need we just need to pay for small distribution which we will do via internet and social networking sites our budget also will include cast and costumes.
  Low budget film companies (indie) however do make some money such as warp films.Little manage cinema release and little manage us distribution due to low population in Britain and the target audience been mainly brits. such as this is England  was not appealing to americans as it was not the typical english stereotype.Most films However do make it to the cinema but however sometimes do fail. There are international distributors and different distributors for different countries due to funding. Examples of this are Dark Knight , have several distributors for other countries such as Village films for Greece and road show film distributors for Australia however there are also international companies which distribute the rest which in this case are warner brothers part of the big 6. Another example of this is this is England. Uk distribution was Optimum Releasing where as for america distributors where ICF first Talk.   This is england by shane meadows is a good example of low budget distribution as he has produced alot of other films that have been a hit distributed by Warp films that have also been distributed internationally and just in the UK such as Donkey Punch and 4 lions both big hits for a low budget distribution.Warp Films also being a low budget distribution like my film have had good success from being such a low budget company and distributing films worldwide and within countries due to target audience and these being social realist genre is very specific.
    Since our film is such a low budget film we are obviously not going to be able to afford a mega budget film such as Avatar  which had a budget of $237 m and is thought to be the most expensive film ever made. Our film will not meet this as we are micro budget company and our audience is britain where as us have far more wider population and is produced in hollywood where the big 6 distributors are that internationally and world wide distribute films.These films are also more likely to feature big stars to make films more appealing for audience as if there is a well known star they may have seen previous films which makes this more important to watch.These companies can also afford to risk failures as it would take a lot for such well known distributor to come to this where as if an indie production risked a film they could be bankrupted.
   If our film fails we will use alternative distributors such as youtube and social networking sites. Films have been distributors like this and have had success such as Fred and Another earth. Which have been made and distributed by youtube and networking sites. However also on these sites there are also people who put on videos with takes on these films and there own films which also get distributed nationally and recognised.







Evaluation Question 4

who would be the audience for your media product and why?


Our BBFC rating was 15 rating due to the violence. However it is not an 18 due to the storyline there is no use of sexual references or gory. Our film is intended to build on tension with some violence but not much.The idea is to create narrative enigma for the audience to follow the killing though the killers eyes.This in itself bring down the rating due to there been no violence and innapropriate scenes fro younger years than 15. 

Our primary target audience: The primary target audience is teens due to this been the typical slasher film audience. The films that have influenced our film we have also taken into account there rating such as halloween , scream , black x mas and cherry falls. These films vary from 15 to 18, cherry falls been the 18 after watching this film we also decided our film would not be as violent and gory with sexual references this was also a big help in the rating we gave our film . By having the film rating at 15 this also brings in a wider audience its self , as we are also 17 and stars in the film are 17 this helped aim the audience from 15 and above.
Our 2nd primary audience: Our 2nd audience is adults above 25. It will be hard to target this audience as we have narrowed down our references to fit the teen age group and to refer there lives. However we are targeting this audience as the film is also creates suspense and tension which can be common with an older age group to watch it for this appeal.
 we chose this to be our target audience due to the slashers box office appeal.Slashers box office appeal are low due to these been mid budget films.They are also all the same genre and don't appeal to all audiences as perhaps a romcom would with big stars. The stars in slashers do not seem to well known they however if this is a franchise often the start of there career such as the shower scene in psycho such as janet leigh this really made her career as it such a famous scene. Typical slasher audience  The typical slasher audience is teens ranging from 16-24.This is a typical slasher audience because this genre is most common amongst teens due to the stars been teens and the storyline been about teen life. Teens then can refer to this in there own life's making the element if the slasher genre more scary. Aiming at this group also makes it popular by narrowing down the audience to make all references to the teen age group. 

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/ address your audience?

We attracted our audience by sticking with the stereotypes for the genre such as the final girl , scream queen and killer and focusing on the common slasher conventions. We tried to stick to Laura mulveys theory of the scream queen too making references through out our film.Also we attracted the audience through the female character like most films do , using attractive stars. This attracts male audience as well as female due the characters been female. This attracts male audiences because of the male gaze.

We addressed our audience through the characters we used by making references to teen life as the characters used were teens.We were also able to address the audience with the help of digitization by using the social networking sites facebook and twitter, by using these we're enabling ourselves and our production to be accessible by thousands over the internet, mostly family and friends, but they are also open to give us feedback on how to improve the media product and get a good insight in what the audience are looking for and want.

Evaluation Question 6

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



throughout my project i have used a lot of different technologies such as blogger , final cut express , imovie , and much more .


First i used Blogger this has been a big part of technolgy i have used as i have used it for many blog posts and researching topics. I have also used to blog and extract information.Blogger is where i have put together my coursework, by following lesson schedules and typing up main things i have learnt. When constructing my product i have found blogger to also be a way of distribution of products and my film as well to get feed back.Without this i would have to pay to distribute my products and my course work would have to be by hand . Without this technology media studies would be a lot harder.It has also been alot easier to build this up as it is quick and easy to use . Personally i have also used it off my smart phone this has also been very useful in itself.

I have used Final cut express and final cut pro both for making the movie and vodcasts them selves.I have used final cut pro the most as it has been very easy and useful for editing at home and in school.I have used final cut to make vodcast first for my blog.This was very simple as all i had to do was insert footage or pictures and talk over them. I then edited my video on this technology this was fun and once i got to grips with it i found it very easy to work.

I have also used garage band , i have used garage band to create my sound track for the film.This was easy and simplistic. The features were laid out on how to work it.However i did find it challenging putting it together with my film.Without garage band i would of been very hard to make such thing as a sound track to the film that fits perfectly and was our choice.I have learnt from constructing this product the different types of music that fit with different genres. I have also learnt how to work it for feature use this has been very helpful.


I have also used hd cameras to film my product as a form of digitisation. These have been very easy to work. I taught myself how to use them after playing around with them on the different shoots. It was very simplistic.Without this technology our media course work would have been alot harder to produce and alot more expensive.It was also very easy uploading the footage as you used an sd card to hold the footage this was very good and really helpful . from using this technology i have learnt how to create different shots, angles and more importantly how to create different footage to achieve purpose.