Evaluation Task 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this project?

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

Evaluation Task 5; How did you attract/address your audience?

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Evaluation Task 4: What would be your audience for your media product?

I think our target market for this film is an older teen/young adult market, as our main character is an older teenage girl and it plays on themes of isolation and abandonment. I think the ratio of male to female coming to see the film would be about equal, as the main character is a girl, so girls empathise with her, and since she is shown to be so vulnerable, boys feel the need to look after her and feel protective of her. Our character represents an average western school girl, with no super powers or special talents, simply a girl who finds herself completely alone, and how she deals with this isolation and constant threat of danger.

Due to the fact that she is English, the target market would be much wider than the target market for a Chinese/Spanish/Japanese film, as they tend to be translated more and simply better known.
This film is not for people who are only into mindlessly gory horror and thriller, as I would sat that it fits more into the surreal psychological thriller genre. There are no unrealistic mass murderers or crazy schemes.

When we came up with the idea, we only thought about the title sequence, and didn’t really think about why all these people have disappeared. So we could go in a few different directions with the plot. It could be the cause of alien abduction, government evacuation, a highly infectious virus or global warming to name just a few. This would effect what genre our film fit into and has left us with a more open ended idea of our target audience. The idea of the film is that it is more realistic and that this could potentially happen.

Similar film ideas include 28 days later, I am legend and Independence Day, and I would say that these are the kind of films our target audience would watch and have enjoyed.

I would put a rating of 12 on this film due to its lack of gore and horror, because I think smaller children would find this film slightly disturbing due to the ideas of abandonment and being alone, and its lack of vibrant colour, music and positive themes.

Evaluation Task 3: What kind of Institution would pick up your film?

I think that our project is a high concept thriller. However I don’t think it is mainstream enough to be picked up by a larger institution, so I think instead a smaller independent institution would pick it up. Looking at the films it has produced already, I would say that Vertigo may produce this film.

 I decided this after looking into the film ‘Monsters’ released by Vertigo in 2010. It is a high concept, low budget film with all the effects done by 1 person. They filmed it in guerrilla style, with no fixed locations decided, they just filmed as they went with a very small crew. It allowed them to discover a lot of interesting and unique locations. I can see my film going this way, with our main character going out on her own and discovering deserted towns on her journey.

I think our film would be advertised virally on the internet in side bars, and with strategically placed posters in places where it is more likely to be successful.
I think it would be target released around the country at first to gage popularity and possibly added to different cinemas depending on demand. I think it would probably make most of its money on DVD and Blu-Ray after cinema release, and also be available on iTunes to download.

Evaluation Task 2: How does your product represent particular social groups?

I would say that our opening sequence represents 2 different social groups.
The first is teenagers between the ages of 14-19, who are living at home. Our main and only character is an older teenage girl, living in a family home. She does not conform to any specific social groups and is free from any accessories which may display her wealth, or lack of it. This opens up the character to a wide teenage audience and doesn't exclude people from different backgrounds. We didn't want this film to focus on her appearance/social life, we want it to look at the concept of being completely abandoned and isolated as a young person.

Submarine,  the 2010 film by Richard Ayoade uses similar techiques. In the house environment it is not very clear, nor is it specifically relevant what the social standing of the family is. The main character (shown top right) doesn't fit into any stereotypes, with no stand out hair or costumes, just normal, average clothes. It focuses more on the problems in his life and the observations he makes as he goes by his day to day activities.

The second social group is the middle/lower class family. It is clear from the external setting that this is an average sized family home, with no obvious geographical location, allowing the audience to span from all over the country. There are a few shots throughout the sequence which hint at family life, such as the babies room, monitor and photo, the paintings of family members in the stairwell, the decor of the kitchen and the family portrait shown in the toaster shot.
It features a lot of normal, monotonous morning events having gone slightly wierd, such as  waking up, cooking toast, having a shower. We chose to represent 'the family environment' as a bit cluttered and messy to add a sense of realism, without taking away from the shot and storyline.

I think that a similarly set up show is Outnumbered, it is set in a messy family home, and the props have been placed to accurately represent a 'lived in' house, which is not unnaturally clean, as they are trying to give a truthful and real feel of family life. Below are some screen shots from the show which I think show the similarities in set up and props.

Evaluation Task 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I have taken screen shots from both my piece and the opening sequence from 'I Am Legend'. This is to show the similarities between my product and a real life media product. In both sequences there is one main character, who is the hero of the film.

They have a lot of close ups and reaction shots to put the audience on the side of the character. I have found that there are quite a few parallels between my titles and the openng titles of I Am Legend. I think that my choice of font accurately reflects fonts frequently used in real media product.

In the pictures on the middle left both images are specifically close up on sections of the body to draw focus to key actions in the frame.

Website screenshot...

To create more realism to my product, I created a mock up of a website homepage which people go and look at. I created this file in photoshop from scratch, looking at website elements to make it look authentic. I thought that these were the most important elements of a movie website, and the other pages go off to explain about the movie.

The Downloads and Gallery pages offer screenshots and sneak peaks of the film with downloadable things like screensavers and website buttons.

The About page does what it says, it tells you about the film. On this website it would talk a lot about the people involved in the making of the film, and not so much about the plot as we want to keep the mount known about the film minimal, to create more hype and promise or the audience.

The Buy page would not come into use until the film had stopped being shown at the cinema, and the BluRay/DVD/Digital download became available. Until that point the page would just says approximately say when the BluRay/DVD/Digital download would be available, perhaps have promises of special features and bonus material to keep interest.