Preliminary Exercise

Completed Thriller Product - Masquerade

Post Evaluation - Audience Research Interviews

We carried out the same questionnaires that we did at the audience research stage on people that had actually watched our completed media product.

Evaluation - How did you address/attract your audience?

I'm really close to the camera because it was my 7th take, the other six I either messed up the speech or I was inaudible.

Evaluation: Who would be the audience for your Media product?

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

1: Don’t film in reflective surfaces. We wanted to have a car scene where it drove up, and because it was a sunny day and the car was quite clean, it reflected back at us, and you could see our camerawoman holding the camera in that shot. We could not edit this out of the prelim later. To counter this, we removed the mirror that was originally in Paul’s garage.

2: Make sure there’s nothing in the room that could make unwanted noise. This wasn’t really a worry for our final product as we added a piano overture to the final thing, but in our prelim, we wanted a dark room brighten up with the light switch but you can hear the click from the light switch in the room we were filming in.

3: About lighting. As mentioned before, we wanted a dark room to brighten up, but because it was a sunny day outside and there were windows in the room, there was only so much blinds could do. Also, there were windows at the top of the room which we couldn’t reach, and the light from the corridor outside, so that couldn’t be controlled. In our final piece, we made sure not to get the actual source of light in the shot to prevent unwanted glares, and also we only kept the light one at one end of the room, and filmed in the other, so it was bright enough to see but could still be classed as low key lighting.

What kind of Media institution might distribute your product and why?

The film was produced on a skeleton budget with a little knowledge of how to film and also not as high quality cameras as you may find in the industry, and was produced in a garage rather that a Hollywood studio, so I wouldn’t expect many big media instutions to take our product seriously.

What I would consider doing is trying to get it shown at film festivals that show Indie Films, such as Raindance in France or Frightfest in London as Frightfest is a festival that shows more grisly films, and ours has quite a violent plotline to it (See treatment on blog). If it was to get noticed and possibly distributed on film, I would probably think about contacting advertising agencies near me, but to produce the film I would probably choose would be the branch of Pinewood that are looking to invest in Indie films. They are the creators of massive series such as James Bond, but after the unexpected success of The King’s Speech they are looking to invest in small films.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/mar/08/pinewood-kings-sppech-budget

 I would send it to them because they would help it get off the ground with their investment and maybe use of their studio and equipment, as they seem pretty focused on making the best they can with a low budget.