Project Evaluation

Our A-level media task was to create a short 5 minute film written, filmed, edited and directed by our group. As with last year we documented our progress on blogspot.com and I added from preliminary sketches of film and articles to early script and film ideas to the blog to show progress through the project.

The film me and my group made was called ‘Out of Signal’ which is a horror/thriller set in some local woods with an unknown killer on the loose. The plot revolves around the killer stalking these two teenage boys through the woods, which leads to the demise of one of the boys and eventually creating a lot of suspense. The film was shot over a couple of days and in the same location and clothing, this was done for continuity sakes to give the film a flow. We filmed with one camera so when we wanted a different camera shot for the same scene we had to go through that same scene twice. I made sure I edited the scene to give the impression that it was continuous which was hard but I believe I achieved it well. I also am very happy with the beginning of the film with the title sequence, which I made to look like a television set loosing signal to fit with the film. We also added in a news report to add some story and we believed it worked really well to set the mood. I believe the audience for the film is 15-60 years old mainly due to the violence and plot.

Then I made a film poster and an article page containing a review of the short film. These are mandatory and our group did our own. The film poster I am very proud of because I really like the detail, I added the actors into blood stains with a fade effect and I added the same font for the title as I did for the titles in the film. In the article page I added screens from the film and I personally reviewed it, I made sure I was not biased and made a fair review with both positive feedback and negative feedback.

The research that went into the project was mainly to get inspiration for the poster and film. I also researched into film magazines and their reviews to get inspiration for the layout of my review page. We, as a group also looked into other film posters, for example I looked at the ‘Blair witch project’s’ poster. As well as the written side of the research we watched a couple of short films on ‘YouTube’ to see what the quality of short films are like and we were impressed, I listed a couple of the ones we looked at on my blog.

The audience research our group did was a questionnaire but also something rather unique. We analysed our views that we had gotten from YouTube. This included how steady the views are going up, where in the world the short film has been watched and how many people in total has watched our film. This was interesting to look at as we have been viewed in multiple countries such as Canada and India.

If I could change anything about our film it would be the ending. Not as much to take away the car scene but to add in a point of view shot of the killer driving the car towards the actor. I would do this to give it more of a shock impact when the car hits which is one of the things we found people also thought could be improved through the questionnaire.

I am very proud of our film and project on a whole, I believe our group made a top quality film, I believe that the poster and article page I made looks very professional and I am pleased with how the preparation through researching into posters, other short films has turned out also.



So in what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions in real products?

My media product uses typical conventions of a horror/thriller film to convey its position in that particular genre. For example, my film uses point of view shots for the killer to give him a sense of mystery, the film is set in the woods which is typical for a scary film and the film slowly builds up suspense with a climatic finish. A way the film challenges this convention however is the time of which the film is set, ours is set in daylight which is not typical of horror films and gives it a unique style. Another way our film challenges the normal conventions is that horror films usually give their killers more ‘screen time’ with an actual personality but ours make him mysterious with only glimpses of what he looks like giving the audience the power to decide on what they think he does look like.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

The combination of my article and film poster along with my film ‘Out of Signal’ , i believe is very effective. Both use the same font for all the titles which links them all together and they all fit into the genre very well. The film poster i am especially pleased with because it adds simplicity with effective choice of colour. The blood has characters from the film inside it which looks very professional. In conclusion the ancillary texts fit very well with the film due to the continuity and design of both that mimic the films style.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We learned that our film was very well received. Most believed that it was a great suspense built film with good narrative and editing, as well as music and setting. The only thing that was asked to maybe change is the ending. The comments said that it was a little too slow when running over the actor, we did re-film the ending but due to technical difficulties with adding it in we could not do it. Overall the feedback was very positive and was interesting to see what people liked.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

The media technologies we used included a canon video camera, Microsoft word, Sony Vegas pro 8.0 (editing software), Photoshop, YouTube, Blogspot.com and Dafont.com to get the font we wanted. Microsoft word was used for the poster and article page and all the others are for their respective areas (for example I used YouTube to put our film online etc). The technology that took the most time to use was easily Sony Vegas as it is quite professional and difficult to use, thankfully I have had experience with it, it is a lot better than windows movie maker but not as advanced as final cut pro. In the research and planning stage I used YouTube to also look at other short films people have made to see what the level of expertise there is and how they themselves created their films. In the evaluation stage I used Blogspot.com as a online Journal for my project listing all the stages I went through and all posts from research to final outcomes. In conclusion I used multiple media technologies throughout all parts of the project but the most time consuming was most likely development of the film.