Evaluation

 1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge conventions of media?

One way we used and developed the generic conventions of the horror genre was by setting the narrative at night. This allowed for a more realistic atmosphere to be created making the shots more believable as the audience were bathed in the grungy shadows of the dark murky mise-en-scenes created. The shadows casted by the generic creepy trees assisted with the portrayal of a generic horror film as it helped to emphasise the rural setting. We decided to challenge the generic conventions of the genre by inverting the conventional sacrificial lamb; Zhanvane. Stereotypically, a horror film portrays the first one to die as a blonde white female (The Ring 2002) however we challenged this by having Zhavane be a black


Our media product was to be a product of horror that we could use to attract and hopefully scare our intended audiences in order to see the impact of the product and how effective it was. One way we used and developed the conventions of the horror genre was by using the time of day to our advantage to give a much more realistic and believable atmosphere that the audience was dwell in; because it was night time, we had a greater advantage as the entire set was either covered by numerous shadows of trees or was completely dark, hereby setting up the situation and perhaps introduces a place that we are to find out about more later. Another convention of horror of which we then decided to challenge was through the inversion of the conventional characters that are likely either be killed, survive or kill-- for example, we had a young girl (Zhavane) dressed in what appears to be a torn, bloody and muddy white dress that could imply she has escaped from a place of torture and pain, and her demeanour, which is scared (made evident by the panting and the constant scanning of the area), our implication and theory that she is on the run from a place that she was kept in is further proved by the evidence on screen. The inversion also lies in the fact that the antagonist is a black man, which is an inversion because the antagonist of the films are usually white and have some form of dysfunctional background that aids to justify their later actions, but yet in our film, he is dressed in clothes that suggest a setting that could be during the 1800's, where slaves were prevalent in this time period-- he is attacking a black girl, thus creating confusion as to why he could possibly be attacking someone of his own race during a time where they are all discriminated against.


















5) How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted our audience mainly through the use of social media. The reason for this is because through our extracurricular activities which involve creating short web series and making short films on YouTube, we have gained somewhat of a fanbase that we, as filmmakers, were able to utilize in a unique way. By strategizing, we used this to our advantage by promoting the video on Facebook where our fanbase is most likely to be prevalent; since our audience targets the ages of 16-24, which are considered young people, and our fanbase consists of these and different age groups that we have found over the Internet, it was a great strategic move in terms of attracting the correct audience to our product and ensuring that our product was successful. Given our success rate in making other films, this provided a boost to the promotion as the audiences who have watched our previous works and enjoyed it will most likely watch this and promote it by other means. We promoted the film by using pictures from the shoot to 'tease' the audience, giving them more of an incentive to want to know what the film will be about; we also addressed our audience primarily through using actors that are close to the age group because, as the Uses and Gratifications puts it, it helps to create a cathartic reaction that the audience will then take in and thus make our product more successful than anticipated.

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

I have learnt about the capabilities of a DSLR camera and its usefulness over a much expensive camera that would be ideal for filming such movies; one thing I have learnt about the capabilities is the quality differentiation between two different DSLR cameras, such as the Canon 5D (used to film our last film) and the Nikon D3100 (used to film our three previous test films). We surmised that the Canon 5D was much more useful in terms of capturing better sound, filming in the dark and capturing high-quality content simultaneously, while the Nikon D3100 specializes in providing better quality during the daytime and although the sound is mitigated, it allows for better sound editing to come in play, as well as its usefulness with the lens as it plays a big part in showing who is important and who is unimportant (focus). In terms of software, we have dabbled in different editing programs to accomplish our tasks, such as Sony Vegas Pro 12 and Adobe After Effects (mainly), as well as Final Cut Pro and iMovie, which we have used to complete our final film; this helped us to see the many different elements in filmmaking and editing, as well as giving us an insight as to which one works better to create a better piece. Perhaps our biggest discovery is the Internet's potential as a market base rather than just a place for social media to bustle, as it worked to our advantage; the Internet has a massive and wider range of different age groups to appeal to and thus it helps to either promote and appeal to these people or it helps for audience research as it operates on an international basis rather than just a local or national basis--these are the primary and most prominent discoveries about the importance of technology that we have made through our research.

7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what have you learnt in the progression from that to the final product?

I have learnt more about corresponding shots and using them to my advantage. Continuity is a very important and crucial part in film as it helps to portray realism but at times, it can be beneficial to experiment quite a bit with different elements in order to create a distortion effect that accurately portrays the story that the director may be trying to tell. In terms of story itself, we have learnt about using an opening to set up the events for the rest of the film, and we have learnt about its importance in creating a first impression for the audience to observe and then judge, and finally, what we have learnt most is to be committed to our roles enough to create an original piece because it is what sells the realism and the story to the audience, and also sees a dramatic improvement in our endeavour concerning filmmaking. 

Our ethos during our filming was that 'as long as you worked hard and pushed past your boundaries, there would be nothing that could stop you from progressing rapidly', thus this is what held our team together and given that we were all friends, the confidence boost helped to make this a great success.
 

Audience Reactions to ParaSight:





Judging by our audience reactions I would deem this production a success. Although not being able to have the crisp quality we envisaged, one could argue that the grainy footage helped to sell the horror with the grunginess reflecting the unsettling situation. If we had more time I think we could have focused more on the typography of the titles; however the text we have included seems to be fit for purpose.