Media StudiesEvaluation

Daniel DrakesEYE FOR AN EYE

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media

products

I studied the film ‘the rage: Carrie 2’ for my textual analysis

Both my production Eye for an Eye and The rage are supernatural horrors and we used a number of features in order to portray the genre.Eg. The setting of school or college and the use of young characters are typical of horror movies

Textual Analysis

Our storyline is based on Todorovs theory on Narrative where there is…◦ Normality (Jay joking about with steve)◦ Disruption (the strange classroom)

Equulibrium Model

Our Characters are Jay, Steve and Chris

They are all young, and dress in young fashionable dress. We use this to show that there is no underlying stories to these characters and that these characters would quite easily blend in to society (if he came in scruffy clothing looking homeless the audience would wonder why)

They all behave in a typical way for their age group, not taking to much seriously and joking about

Characters

Chris is a very typical character in supernatural horror movies.

His identity is hidden until the very end and is the cause of the strange going ons.

Horror movies have similar characters such as Scream in which his face is hidden and Carrie who can cause strange things.

Chris

We called our film eye for an eye because it sets up the theme of revenge.

Our titles features a zoom through the eye of our DFS productions logo, this suggests your getting an insight into a story.

Eye for an Eye

We followed the genre conventions through Misc en scene.

The setting was a college. Typical because it’s where young people congregate. Young people are usually an age group used in horror movies

Examples of this can be found in Carrie and Final Destination

Genre Conventions

We used sound and editing to add tension to the scenes such as the fast paced editing during the classroom scene.

We didn’t use camera movements such as paning during the classroom scene as we didn’t think it would add to the tension

We did use panning during the running scene as jay tries to escape college and chris.

We added non diagetic sound to the scene to add tension to the scene.

Tension is a big part of horror movies because it makes the audience feel like they are part of the movie through being scared and along with one of the characters or curious as to what happens next

We compared and analysed three movie posters, Rage Carrie 2, What lies Beneath and The Ring

Film Posters

Eye for an eye movie poster

Our Poster uses some of the features as the three posters we analysed because they were also supernatural horrors

One of the major features of any movie poster is that the main title is the biggest font on the page. This meant that it would be the first text the audience would read

Another feature of the movie posters was the use of colour. As you can see from the hyperlink on the right◦ Black is usually

associated with death, evil and the unknown

◦ Red is usually associated with Danger and Power

http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-meaning.html

We used colour to portray meaning aswell. Our posters background is black which fades to red. Similar to the carrie 2 poster.

These colours signify the unknown causes of the events happening to jay whilst the red signifes danger and without giving away the storyline and or using a lot of text on the poster.

The Unique selling point of the movie is the missing identity of the person on the poster. The audience can only see the folder and the arm holding it. It leaves the audience captivated as to who the character is and that they will have to watch to find out.

Another feature which adds to the USP is tagline on the folder which reveals the date and says ‘its your turn’ which signifies to the audience that revenge is an important theme to the movie as Chris comes back to attack Jay for leaving him to die

Film Review

Eye for an eye magazine review

We compared review pages from Empire, Sight and Sound and Total film for Carrie 2, What Lies Beneath and the ring.

We found that Empire use of language was easy to understand used common phrases and didn’t use the queens English.

Sight and Sound used more developed language aimed at the educated and strong movie fans.

Total film used developed language with important media keywords but also made it more understandable to the casual reader.

Our Target audience is 16 – 30 year olds, therefore through questionaire analysis we concluded that they were more likely to be casual, busy on the go readers then the dedicated readers. Preferring big detailed pictures to lots of text.

The review mentions supernatural thriller, telling the reader the genre of the film

It also promotes the film by saying must watch

The review focused on the actors and the storyline of the movie. We focused on these because we realise they are very important features of supernatural horror movies for a casual reader.

Our movie layout follows the layout of empire

We used a number of features such as the verdict box, production details and plot outline

We also put the image in the top middle of the page as we hope the image would draw the audience into the review

The main text are divided up into coloums and separated by lines. One big paragraph could be seen as a drag by our target audience and the divisions kept it clear

We used this font in the title as we thought it portrayed the genre of horror with the red and the letters written in what looks like blood

We used the Arial font in the main body to keep it clear and concise

We used a ratings system called the juju rating, it’s a play on the logo of DFS Productions which have skulls, if we we reviewing a universal movie we would use the globes from their logo.

Overall we gave the film 4 out of 5 skulls as we based it on the rough cut feedback and knew that some mistakes were made

2. How effective is the combination of your main

product and the ancillary text

The film poster uses a variety of features in order to portray the genre of the film

The colour Red portray anger and evil and the colour black portrays evil

Both these colours are used on the film as an indication to the genre of the film

The date of relase can also be used to identify the genre as Friday the 13th is associated with Horror and Haloween.

The poster also reveals there is a hidden character. The audience see part of his body but don’t know who it is

This builds up a sense of curiosity as the audience now want to know who it is

This gives the poster a USP as it attracts audiences because they want to know who the hidden character is

When getting feedback on the poster we found that it was easy to understand and all the relevant information was clear (Title, Date of release, Critical Acclaim) and the genre was transmitted through the poster.

The film review portrays genre, immediately saying must see supernatural thriller

The film portrays the films target audience through the use of the ratings system which wouldn’t be used in reviews aimed at older educated audiences (eg Sight and Sound)

Film Review

The reviews main picture reveals two of the three main characters (Jay and steve) It doesn’t however reveal chris’s identity as the killer because his identity is kept secret til the very end

3. What have you learned from your audience

feedback

◦ We conducted a questionaire to our target audience of 16-30 year olds in order to give us an insight into how they would react to the movie

◦ From the questionaire we found that although Comedy was our target audiences favourite genre, Horror ranked highly.

◦ We also asked about the most important features for a horror movie according to them. They most expected to see a mysterious character. We followed this up by keeping Chris’ identity secret til the very end of the movie.

We also gave a short synopsis to our audience in order to test the repsonse. We found that most of the responses were positive.

We used reaction sheets in order to gain feedback from the rough cut of the movie.

The audience mentioned that the camera angles were good and steady however they also mentioned that the movie lacked tension and atmosphere.

To improve this we sped up the editing and added non diagetic sound

We also used reaction sheets for our first drafts of the poster and review.

The review was praised for its clarity and appearance however we had to change some of the words as the target audience didn't know what they meant.

The poster was praised for its portrayal of the genre however it was told that there was too much information on the page. To rectify this we shrunk the credits at the bottom of the page and removed the actors names from the top of the poster.

Upon the feedback from the final cuts of the movie and review we feel that we were successful in creating these media texts as we rectified the problems of the first draft without creating more problems.

4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and

research and planning and evaluation stages

In pre production we used alot of internet research such as Wikipedia to make sure the genre conventions were right.

Digital cameras were also used in the reece report.

We also used the internet to check weather reports in case it prevented filming from going ahead.

We used HDD cameras in the production of the movie. These were easy to use and sped up the editing process because it used ‘log and transfer’ rather than ‘log and capture’ in Final Cut Pro.

It also allowed use to review shots immediately rather than have to wait and film again at a later date.

Final Cut Pro was the editing software which we used. This process allowed used to create technical sequences such as the opening sequence when the camera seems to zoom through the eye.

Photoshop was used to manipulate the images for the poster and review. We used numerous features such as cropping and creating layers inorder to get the desired appearance and image.

Microsoft office applications were used to create most of the Pre production paperwork and the layout for review.

Microsoft word gave the written text a professional look and Excel calculated our questionnaire analysis into tidy graphs.

Publisher was used for the main layout of the poster and cropped the picture in order to make it fit the space required on the page.

We used features such as the gradient fade for the black to red in the posters background.

We also used brushes such as the blood stains in order to give the title a unique look.

Different fonts were used such as Agency FB for the credits inorder to give that traditional movie poster look and distinguish it from the text above

Photoshop

In post preduction we created a blog for the movie on wordpress.com. Wordpress is a social blogging website and we uploaded all the pre production paperwork onto it.

We also uploaded the review and poster onto it

We changed the colour scheme so that it would match the colours of the poster more. We also created a banner for the blog on photoshop with the Eye for an eye and DFS production logo to give it an original look.

www.eyeforaneyemovie.wordpress.com