1. AS Media Studies - Evaluation By Jamie Brookes, Rebecca Broadbent and Billy Warville

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? While creating our media product we insured we involved codes and conventions of real media products. Some of the codes and conventions we used were: Dark Atmosphere Static Text Red and White Text-representing blood and death Forest Settings Mysterious Characters Screaming Weapon Eerie Music Running Death We tried to use as many of these codes and conventions as possible to insure that we keep connections with real media products.

3. How does your media product represent particular social groups? As our media product was film we do not have a particular social group however we do have a target audience of teenagers/young adults aged 15+. Later in the evaluation we will be explaining more on why we chose teenagers as our target audience and why we expected this target audience would be the most successful.

4. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? We feel we have answered this question in one of our posts on the blog, this can be seen below. It is continued on the next slide two slides. Nowadays there are many film production companies in existence and more are created yearly. There are a number of major ones, the major American companies are sometimes referred to as the big six but as time goes on that has been changed and it is publically seen that there are at least eight major film companies. If our film were to be really made we would have to consider what institutions would be involved in this process. We would need to choose an institution which would be best for the creation, distribution and production of our product. Below are the main companies that could do this. Universal Studios is a subsidiary of NBC Universal. The main motion picture production/ distribution part is called Universal Pictures. It's a very well known company and has produced and/or distributed famous films such as Love Actually, Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, E.T. the Extra Terrestrial and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

5. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? Continued. The Walt Disney Company, known as Disney, is best known for films for children and families. They make a lot of animation films and many live actor films; including, The Pirates of the Caribbean film series, Enchanted, Finding Nemo, the Incredibles, National Treasure, Bolt, High School Musical and Flubber. The company also has some famous subsidiaries such as Pixar, Touchstone Pictures and Miramax Films. Warner Bros. Pictures is a major film studio and subsidiary of Time Warner. It makes a range of films of different genres and for audience's of different ages. Some famous films it has produced are: The Harry Potter film series, Miss Congeniality, The Matrix, Troy, One Missed Call, Friday the 13th and The Shining. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc, MGM, is an american media company and mainly produces and distributes film. Some films they have produced/distributed are Fame, Stargate film series, Premonition, Casino Royale, Lucky Number Slevin, Basic Instinct, Legally Blonde, De-Lovely and Halloween. Paramount Pictures is the film company owned by Viacom, and parent company of DreamWorks. Films released by these companies include: Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers, Along Came a Spider, Bridge to Terabithia, Shark Tale, Shrek and sequels, Friday the 13th and sequels, G.I. Joe, Failure to Launch, Just Like Heaven, Madagascar, The Terminal, Pulse, War of the Worlds and The Godfather. As of February 2009 DreamWorks films are released through The Walt Disney Company.

6. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? Continued. Columbia Pictures Industries Inc, is an american film production and distribution company. Its parent company is Sony Pictures Entertainment. Films Columbia has produced/ distributed include Men in Black, Spider Man, White Chicks, The Grudge, Are we There Yet?, Rocky Balboa, Hancock, 30 Days of Night and 2012. Twentieth Century Fox is one of the newest film studios to be classed as major. Its parent company is Fox Filmed Entertainment, owned by News Corporation. It's most famous films include Star Wars, Ice Age, X-Men, Die Hard, Planet of the Apes, Night at the Museum, Home Alone and Predator. Lion Gate Entertainment Corporation originated in Canada and is a very successful independent film and television company. Films released by the company are: the Saw franchise, Bratz; The Movie, Disaster Movie and Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire.

7. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? Continued. We think the most appropriate choice for us, considering the genre of our film is Columbia Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures or Paramount Pictures. This is because of these companies previous experience with large scale horror, thriller, action and mystery movies. Also Paramount Pictures is responsible for the horror film Pulse, and a large part of our film is based on ideas and presentation used in Pulse. Another choice would be Lions Gate because they own the highly successful Saw franchise. These films are very popular horror films that produce high profit.

8. Who would be the audience for your media product? Our target audience for our film media product were teenagers, we decided to target teenagers as we believed teenagers will enjoy our horror/mystery film better than younger people and the elderly. We also believe that if we were to complete the whole film the age rating will be a 15/18, this was another reason why we chose to target a teenage audience. When we completed the media product we showed the media product to people in our class who are aged 16-18, we received good feedback from all of them which meant we had completed a successful media product and chose the correct target audience.

9. How did you attract/address your audience? After completing the media product we uploaded it onto one of the top video sharing sites – YouTube. We chose to upload it to the internet as we believe this was the most efficient and realistic way of receiving feedback from people of all ages and from people around the world. After uploading it onto the internet we all copied and pasted the link onto social networking sites for example Facebook and MySpace. We did this to address the audience of our product and to attract attention from all over the world. As well as showing it on the internet we also showed people in school to get their opinions, all of which were positive. We also showed people the product during construction to get their opinions on whether or not they thought it was going to be successful.

10. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? When putting together a project like this there are many things needed. Equipment and programs. A lot of them were new to us. Jamie had previous experience with everything we used so it helped us to know what to do when we were new to it. Using all the features of a Mac were new to some of us and some of them were rather tricky to get a hang but in the end we did. When editing the film we had to get use to the programs involved in this and learn about what they could do. We had all used camera’s before but mostly for fun, so actually having to learn how to film different shots and get it into position was different. Also we used a tripod to make out footage steady and give it an overall more professional look. None of us had used a tripod before for anything, but it was very easy to use. In the process of making our film and completing all the research and planning surrounding it we have learnt how to use a lot of new technologies and gained skills that may be useful to us in the future.

11. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? Compared to the preliminary film task we all agree that we found the main task more enjoyable to create, more successful and had much more connections with the codes and conventions of our genres, horror and mystery. Despite also enjoying the preliminary task we found that we were able to achieve so much more in the main task we have all grown closer together as a group and believe if we were able to do this product again we will be able to do so as a team just as successfully. We have also learnt some more skills and techniques during our journey to the completion of our final product. For example we have learnt more camera angles and techniques, we have developed our software, editing and developing skills and have also learnt a number of different facts, codes and conventions about numerous different film genres. Overall we have all enjoyed the project and believe we were able to complete it effectively and successfully.