Question 4&5 Continued... Hurtwood House Media

Hurtwood house media.

Hurtwood house is a boarding school in Britain. To create their media thrillers, they are given a budget, giving them an edge and allowing therm to make a more realistic opening.

The thrillers are put on youtube and viewed by the public. They are also put onto the website for Hurtwood house so that students and adults interested in the school can view it. On youtube it received 823 views showing that the internet can gain a wide audience for independent companies.

The particular opening i have seen is one set in a tube station. The station was hires using the budget, so the platform was empty. the opening features a man boarding the tube and turns out to be the only person in the carriage, apart from a creepy girl who appears. The opening is genuinely thrilling and creates suspense. Not a huge amount of editing techniques were used but this is made up for with the use of flashing lights and unique angle of shots. i particularly liked when the camera was on the floor and filmed the female slowly walking towards it. this put the audience in the position of the young man and made me feel quite disturbed.

The mise en scene used was very similar to what Erika wore, with a white dress and bare feet. However the make-up of the girl was more thought about and made her look dead.



EVALUATION QUESTION 8

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

I have done some research on how my skills have progressed by looking at a previous prelim that I have done and comparing it to my final film.

I have mainly focused on the what would please the eye of the audience therefore I have compared two shots talking about each one's success.

MISE EN SCENE

The opening shot of my Prelim exercise was slightly out of focus as you can see, and the lighting was not very well thought through, now comparing it to the opening of my final film the lighting well thought of to make sure that it appeals to the audience. The genres of the two films are also extremely different.
I have learnt to focus on mise en scene a lot more and noticed the drastic difference that it makes in the quality of video. Some of the props that we have used; costumes, I have now noticed how much of a difference it makes to the value of the film. In my prelim I have used very little amount of notice in the clothes that we wore and the locations of which we filmed at. Here have a judge for yourself:

Now in these two shots you will notice that the camera angles are used for completely different styles of effects. The first screenshot was completely unplanned and took a lot of effort to make look professional, however with the final film, the outfit was discussed and bought earlier which made it so much easier to create effect-full shots to reach the kind of feedback that you would like from your audience.

The location that we had used for our filming in the prelim was completely not thought about. It was something that took us a while to adapt to, to make look more professional. Where as the location for the prelim was discussed in advance and we as a group went down to see it and elaborate on whether or not we thought it was the right location for our final film.

.In these two screenshots, I have displayed the difference between the two types of locations. The prelim seems more dull and is not as effective for the audience, whereas the second screenshot of the final film looks more attractive, eventful. the lighting again plays a big part in both of these shots. The lighting in the prelim I believe is what makes the shot look so dull whereas the screenshot from my final film is light and some of the lighting effects are used to create more tension for instance the bruising that you can see on the legs of the girl are not created by make up, it is just good use of lighting. Having that said we did pay attention to make-up of the main character to make sure that she looks scary enough, we simply did this by wetting the hair and making it messy and all over the characters face. 

CAMERA

As you can see, we experimented with the camera to see how many various shots we can get so that when it comes to editing were not lacking. Taking a lot of footage is something that I learnt in a lecture at london university, when the chief examiner gave us advice on how we can make sure to be on our way to good films. In my prelim however, the shots that were used were not as experimental or effective, they were all pretty much the same to an extent, which to a live audience I suppose would be really not interesting. Most of the shots taken are zoom-ins. Just to have a slight more bit of variation.

EDITING

This shot is I think a perfect example of how much attention we payed to making sure that we did enough. This shot shows different effects and overlapping of images which is way more than I had when filming the prelim:

As you can see this is extremely dull in comparison to the picture above. There are no effects, the lighting is too dark. and the shot is slightly unbalanced. In the first screenshot we used a strategy that as a group we named the 'dadada effect' this is when you get a flash of re-occuring images. We found that this is very effective and according to our audience feedback we have decided that this was one of the most effective things that we had included in our final film. 

SOUND

In my prelim the sound that we use was hardly cared for, we just chose sound from the effects that had already been created in soundtrack pro, however we put so much care into the soundtrack making of the final film. 

Here is another sample of our inspirations: 

LESSON LEARNT

I have learnt how to organise my time, the key skill to media: BE CREATIVE!!
My awareness of technology has expanded dramatically, I hadn't even heard of the technology that I have been using before I started my coursework. This is all thanks to Mary, Rebecca and the tech guys who have helped us so much along the way, THANK YOU!!

EVALUATION QUESTION 7

What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Here is our way of showing you what we have learnt of technologies...

EVALUATION QUESTION 6

Audience feedback and comments...

Here is some class feedback:

I have made videos of random audience feedback, here is a few samples from what the audience had to say:

Having looked at this feedback I now see the main high points of the video, things that were most effective and things that could be improved; having the text on the screen. I have realised that the videos that have been made for this have had excellent feedback from out main target audience (even the boys!). This is beneficial for us because it outlines the fact that we have reached our target audience and have accomplished our ambition meaning that the movie is a success.

EVALUATION QUESTION 4&5

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? How will you attract/address your audience?

Considering that our movie is of a low budget, the expectations are nothing at all like having an audience in odeon or a major budget for advertising and promoting our product. We have uploaded our video to vimeo. This is a website that is pretty much of the same structure as youtube however, it is more private, containing passwords and folders that have sorted out groups of work. Here is an example:

This is so that our video can get out to a wider audience and be reviewed. This is beneficial for us because it allows us to get feedback from different types of audiences.
Another way of us getting people to see the work that we have done is by posting it on a social networking site, here is an example:

This is just some feedback that we have received from an audience.

We could also get people to notice our film by publishing it in magazines. Considering that our film is directed at a female audience we could publish it in a magazine like Ok or GRAZIA. but to get a good general overview from all audiences we could publish an article about it in a magazine such as Total Film.





Taking into account that our movie is not of a major budget or production our launching of the movie did not occur in a big brand cinema. Therefore we resulted to a more private screening which still fulfilled it's purpose in the end.

We are also going to experience a DVD release which puts us in a position to have even a wider audience and the publishing experience.

EVALUATION QUESTION 3

Who would be the audience for your media product?

This is Lydia, 17, she goes to a private girls school in north london. She is a fan of thrillers and horror movies, her favourite movies is 'Clockwork Orange' by 'Stanley Kubrick'. Favourite hobbies: painting, reading, H&M, and she loves history and 16th century art!!
Considering that our movie is a psychological supernatural thriller, she is the perfect audience. We did a survey in class and had decided that our target audience is females between the ages of 16 - 40. Below is a diagram that shows more information about the popularity of thriller genres:

Here is some feedback from what she had to say about my thriller:

This is pretty much what we expected for our audience, therefore I feel like our movie has reached our original target audience.