Evaluations
1.Who would be the audience for your media product?
Statistics say that the usual age for someone watching horror movies is between fifteen and twenty-five. This is because mostly young people feel the need to experiment different emotions and feelings and this is way they look for a thrill. Since our product it’s supposed to create suspense and anxiety we would exclude an audience of people younger than sixteen and people with heart problems or that get easily impressed.
Stereotypes also portray males as more likely to go watch an horror movie than girls, this is one of the reasons why we chose an attractive female as the main character as most horror movie have at least one attractive girl in the cast (ex. the girls from Friday the 13th)
On the other hand our film might also attract female’s as they would reflect themselves in the protagonist.
The reason why we chose to use a boarding school as the setting is because school is such a familiar ambient for teenagers that would make the movie seem more realistic to them.
Aiming to a young audience our movie will be likely to be watched by groups of people as it is very rare to go watch an horror movie by yourself, this would just help Fear Online at the box office.
Talking about an adult audience the movie will attract a majority of middle class people compared to a romantic or comedy movie that would attract more of an high class audience.
Ex Midnight in Paris directed by Woody Allen
Domestic Total Gross: $56,817,045
The Woman in Black directed by James Watkins
Domestic Total Gross: $54,333,290
While doing some research for my product I found that a psychologist (Dr. Glenn D. Walters) identified three main factors that attract people to the horror genre:
Tension
Relevance
Unrealism
2. How does your media product represent different social groups?
Our movie mainly represents the social group of teenagers as our cast is mainly young adults. Teenagers are also the people in society that are more experienced with technology as they were born in the middle of it’s evolution. In Fear Online I wanted to show two different sides of this social group. The first side is their smart actions and matureness as in some ways the use of the internet speeds the learning of things. However, at the same time I wanted to represent them as fragile and easily influenced.
The story also wants to describe a lonely category of people that try and use the internet in order to change the situation even though most of the time people tend to create alter egos that might be more attractive, smarter or hide their disorders. In some way we tend to represent a more the social group of the middle class as the protagonist can afford to go to a boarding school and an iPhone.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
In every part of the world Hammer is synonymous with horror. This British company was founded in 1934 and it owes it’s fame to goth horror. Here after when when the fashion changed and goth horrors were not fashionable anymore Hammer had various ups and downs trying to get back on the market. After forty years Hammer ended in bankruptcy in 1979.
Even though Hammer is not as active as before it still is known globally for their products that include
- Quatermass and the Pit
-Dracula
-Twins of Evil
-Paranoiac
-The Mummy
-The Hound of the Baskervilles
-Yesterday’s Enemy
-The Abominable Snowman
-Captain Clegg
-The Damned
In 2007 Hammer (after twenty years of inactivity) decided to get back on track first with a TV series and later in 2009 in the cinema industry.
Since Luli Lilu Productions is a new company according to our movie’s profit Hammer could gain back it’s fame.
Hammer in the past as also tried to change the kind of horror they produced as they were looking for something more modern and fashionable. Our movie would be the perfect product as it is directed to young people and technology as a theme for an horror movie is still not so used even though I predict it will be in a couple of years as people are becoming slaves of their devices. By producing our movie Hammer Productions would probably attract a different and maybe larger audience (since it also about modern days issues) and it would also intrigue people as it is a different type of horror compared to what Hammer usually produces.
In 2010 Hammer produced various films in the last few years such as: Let me in (2010), The Woman in Black (2012) and The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death (2014).
4. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
As most horror movies do we decided to associated a motif to the antagonist so that every time the audience would hear it they would connect it to him and would know that something is going to happen. Using a motif usually helps to create tension as it keeps the audience focused on the movie as they want to know what is going to happen next. Another characteristic of horror movies we were inspired from was the atmosphere created by the use of dark colour and low lighting during the entire movie (ex. The Woman in Black 1 and 2) or just during the most tensed scenes (ex. Halloween)
Also the use of heavy breathing is very popular in horror movies as it makes the audience nervous a nd most of the time when it is used the antagonist’s face is not visible, this makes the audience uncomfortable but curious at the same time. Some examples of films were heavy breathing is used would be “The Ring” and “The Grudge”.
As the theme of our movie is technology (new types of communications) we decided to make the titling green and almost giving off light.
We decided for green at it is stereotypically used to represent energy in general (ex. Pulse)
Compared to for example to “The Woman in Black” were from the beginning of the movie the black woman is already introduced we wanted to keep the level of tension high by not showing the antagonist face ( in fact at the beginning of the clip we show the set by his point of view) so that the audience could use their imagination.
I challenged the convention about straight shots by filming the beginning from the antagonist point of view as I decided to have some wobbly shots as the antagonist moves.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
The film begins with movie titles, then accompanying the title Fear Online is the sound of a heartbeat. This I feel not only increases the suspense of the film beginning to start but also attracts the viewer to continue to watch due to the intriguing title and sound effect. In fact people that watched the intro told me that the heartbeat sound had some kind of effect on their heartbeat, some of them even asked me to mute it as they were feeling inexplicably nervous and uncomfortable.
The obscurity and black and white effect of the filmography maintains the viewers attention on a high, and the heavy breathing I feel adds a sense of being trapped. The audience is watching Hannah Southam through the eyes of the stalker, this is very unsettling to the viewer as Hannah is oblivious to anyone watching her.
As I was editing our secondary task I decided to add some background sound also behind the “Hammer Productions” logo in order to highlight the collaboration and to keep the viewers attention high on the movie’s title, our production company logo and the director’s names. I feel like maintaining the stalker’s identity anonymous both challenges the viewers to use their imagination and at the same time captures their attention as they want to find out who he is.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
The main programme I had to learn how to use for my secondary task was probably “Final Cut Pro” even though I also had to learn some basics in order to use “Garage Band” for the stalker’s motif. I already had to use “Final Cut Pro” for my preliminary task but I know that now I am way more confident using it. I learnt that even though technology seems hard to use now days we have so many sources that the learning is easier and faster. Personally I found very useful to go watch Youtube tutorials when I did not know how to do something on “Photoshop” or “Final Cut”.
7. Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full products?
During this last few months my skills have really improved in the use of “Final Cut Pro” compared to my preliminary task I improved in making a continuous editing and I also improved the quality of my shots also by discovering the tripod that really helped me.
I also learned how to put music over images and how to delete the diegetic sound in the background of my filming. For my secondary task as it is an opening and we put a couple of film production company logos I learned how to download them from Youtube and then import them into “Final Cut Pro”.
One of the most interesting things to learn was how to create a logo by using Photoshop as at the beginning of my work I didn’t know where to start from.
As well as learning to do other things such as editing photos, by changing colours, blending out blemishes, adding text, and removing unwanted objects from photos. I found it a challenging program to use at first, but it took practice and then I got used to it.
Final Cut Pro I used to edit both my preliminary task and my do rough edits of my main task. I found the program very straight forward to use and and enjoyed playing on it, especially with the sound, and making titles.
As well as using all these computer softwares, I also used new online programs, such as; Blogger and Prezi. These programs were also simple to learn how to use.
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