Evaluation: The Outbreak

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

Originally I made a list of conventions for making a thriller movie to help us build up our own ideas for our thriller opening sequence. We tried our best to include these conventions within our project, the conventions we have used are:

• The lighting is normally darkened and muted, to give a sinister and eerie effect. We use this effect on our filming throughout the forest scene and also whilst we filmed in the lab; we added this effect on after filming when we were editing all our scenes together.


• Sinister music is played throughout our opening sequence so that it gives an eerie feel to the beginning of the thriller and sets the film up for something creepy happening.

At the beginning of the thriller phone booth it uses sinister and quick pace music, this creates tension and suspense and will put the audience on the edge of their seat until the film begins.

• Suspense and tension needs to be built up throughout the film to keep the viewer guessing what will happen next. We made suspense and tension by using short clips of film and flicking quickly back and forth between shots. This is confusing to the audience and they won’t really understand what is yet going on. The suspense is also built up by the use of music.


• Set in atmospheric dark places. In the forest we made sure that it looked quite dark and the forest looked mysterious so that the audience are confused as to where Jay and I are.


• Sometimes films are left at a cliff hanger to leave the audience on the edge of their seat. We put in a cliff hanger through the opening sequence after the title of OUTBREAK this way the audience will want to know what is going to happen next and leave them in suspense.

By using all of these conventions it will help to build up the thriller genre in our project and make sure it fits in with other thriller films. Each film made with makes sure they have included all of the points for their genre so that it attracts the target audience.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our thriller we chose two characters that would be similar to our target audience, this way the audience could relate to the characters and put themselves in the characters shoes. The two characters in our product look like two average college students, relating to the target audience. They’re casually walking through a park or forest as if they were walking home from college or just been out somewhere. The fact that they are college students is shown through the clothes they wear as they are dressed casually as if it were a normal college day. The setting of the lab also shows that they are in a school or college environment as a real scientific lab wouldn’t look so unprofessional and have folders and files lying around. This is all included in mise en scene and is all essential to making sure that the audience understands the characters, what is going on and where characters are.

The camera angles and editing help to show the social groups of the two young adults. It shows that they are close because there is a close up of the two holding hands when Jay falls ill and reaches out for help. It shows that the social group could be close at their college so he feels he can rely on his friends to look after him when something disatrous happens. The sound is important for this as it again shows the closeness for the social groups, when one character asks the ill character if they’re okay.

Overall it presents the college group of students as being a close group that are around to help one another, this is all represented in our media project. This will also attract the target audience as they are likely to be able to relate to what the characters are going through.

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

I think that a media distribution company like, Screen Gems who are a sub section of Sony Pictures would distribute our thriller film. They distributed all of the Resident Evil movies, which are based around zombies taking over the world and a group of people trying to stop them from killing them. They also distributed many other horror/thrillers such as, The Exorcism of Emily-Rose (2005) and Obsessed (2009). Therefore I think that this distribution company would be suitable for my film because they mainly distribute thriller and horror films for the same type of target audience as my thriller.

The budget for screen gems is more of a medium budget and I think that our product would have a medium budget too. Another reason that this distribution company may want to distribute this film, it would fit in well with their others.

If I were giving my film a higher budget I would choose a distribution company like Warner Bros. They have distributed films like Gremlins and The Exorcist; these are both horror/thriller films, which fit the genre of my media product. By using Warner Bros it could end up as a blockbuster film because they distribute films.

However I don’t think this would be suitable for our film in particular, as it looks more like a lower budget to medium budget British film.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for our thriller I think would be younger adults that enjoy watching thriller/horror films. When we did our questionnaire we discovered it that it was the younger adults that were more likely to watch a horror or a thriller film. This is also why when we decided on characters we used college students as it was almost like the audience could relate to them and what is going on in the film.

After showing my target audience our opening sequence product I asked for their feedback. They said it was a film they would consider seeing even though they found the opening a little confusing to follow. However they also added that the confusion would intrigue them to find out what happens throughout the rest of the film. A few things that they may have changed was the way scenes were put together because it seemed a little repetitive, this would be something that I would improve and change if I were to film it again.

How did you attract/address your audience?

By making our film a thriller it attracted our target audience anyway, however there were other aspects of our project that were also key to making sure our target audience would want to watch the film.

After doing research for our thriller project it made it easier to attract and address the audience. We has found that teenagers and young adults preferred to watch thriller or horror movies. Because of finding this out we knew that was our main target audience to attract.

The characters are important to this film as they are young adults like the audience. This means that they could relate to maybe the situations they are in and imagine what they would do if it was them in the same situation as the characters. If the characters were young children or adults then it would have been difficult to attract the audience because they wouldn’t have been able to relate to how the characters would have felt or what they wouldhave done in reacion to the situation.

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

Before starting this project I hadn’t used a camera or editing software to create a product; however by the end of it I have learnt how to use cameras and how to edit correctly.

At first I found it difficult using Adobe Premier Pro, especially as I had never used it or any other editing software before. After figuring out how to use the software it became simple to editing all of the footage and making it into sequence.

I then learnt how to add in the two audio clips we got from http://freeplaymusic.com/ and edit them so that they fitted in the right place with our project. These added extra effects to our project and gave it more of a thriller genre feel.

Once it was put into sequence I learnt how to add transitions onto individual parts of footage so that it wasn’t just scene after scene. We also added after effects on certain parts so that it wasn’t boring and looked more proffesional.

After all the effects were in place and the sequence was in the correct order, we added titles. The titles were there so that the audience knew of the production and distribution and actors. We came across a few problems with this, thinking it would be easy to copy and paste and change a few names. Which infact didn’t work as it meant every title was the same. Therefore after a few attempts we managed to make them all different.

I have learnt that he technologies used are definitely not straightforward to use but after a lot of practice it is easy to get the hang of. I think if I were to do another project I would find it a lot easier because I have gained a lot of skill and knowledge through editing. Also patience as technology doesn’t always go the way you plan it too or things you want to change or do just aren’t possible through time scale or programmes that are used.

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

On my preliminary task I didn’t know too much about editing or filming, but learnt a little in the process. I used the skills I had learnt to move on to making the final product. Firstly I learnt how to use the camera correctly and set it up for the settings that we were in, especially when we were filming in the forest. After this I learnt how to import all the footage onto the computer and put it into Adobe Premier Pro so I could begin editing. When doing this in the preliminary task I had to ask for lots of help as I had no idea what to do, but as soon as starting this media product it was simple. I have definitely learnt a lot since the preliminary task when using cameras.

When first starting the preliminary task I had no idea how to use editing software or Adobe Premier Pro to make a project. When starting editing I came across a few problems. When we first edited our original project we found that we hadn’t got enough footage and had to repeat parts over and over so that it made up the full two minutes. In some ways it works for our project because it fits in with the confusion and suspense. Hopefully this will keep the audience wanting to watch the film to find out what happens next. Another problem that we found was finding the right audio clips to make our project seem like a thriller genre. We searched free websites until we found eerie audio clips that would fit in with our opening sequence so that people would want to continue watching. Finally we found a soundtrack that was called Outbreak, which fitted perfectly for our project. We then edited all of our footage around the soundtrack so that it all fitted together and went in sequence.

Finally, our preliminary task wasn’t very well made; as it was our first ever project. Therefore I feel that since I started on the thriller project I have made a lot of progress and my skills in editing have improved vast amounts; especially in using editing software.