1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of media project? 

Our short film is a zombie horror film, the horror genre is established in the first few moments of our film,  the title sequence credits which overlap the film are eerie and establish a tension from the start.  Our use of setting and simplistic style echoes that of 28 days later and other zombie films such as ZMD, we then developed these styles into our own film by adding pans and credits similar to the film Seven, Our use of horror, tension and reanimation puts our film into a sub-genre of Zombie Horror films. Our use of make-up on the characters and Fog/FX in the scene also indicate this and the opening set is similar to that used in other Zombie horrors, for instance: 

Our opening sequence mirrors the opening to Resident Evil (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GyOYaDHquE) A group are in search of their companions/associates,  and one member finds evidence of their deaths and is attacked, then the rest of the group is assaulted.  

Our main focus on the film is on Joey, Harry and Mikeys disappearance followed by their escape to safety, This is similar to the focus of the small collection of characters in the film used for my fifteen minute analysis – Shaun Of The Dead, where Shaun and his companions are joined in a group trying to find a safe house and in the other film I used as a previous example – Resident Evil, the set of characters are lucky to escape from the attack and are looking for safety.  Our use of make-up on the characters and Fog/FX in the scene indicates our film as being part of the horror genre, the opening set being similar to that used in other Zombie horrors. 

Our Film(Zomg)Resident Evil Original 

The two opening sequences very slightly, our film incorporates black text screens and different lighting which is similar to the effect on resident evil with the set being enshrouded in Darkness and fog covering the location, however our overall effect is different as our overall film focuses on the psychological fight for survival more than the blood and gore and our film makes it quite obvious that Harry is having a psychological breakdown throughout. 

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

In our film, you could argue there is a gender bias as the only woman seen in the film is being attacked by the zombies and then the small child – a girl, the damsel in distress – is rescued by Joey, showing Men as the heroes, as in the stereotypical action film.  This links into our target audience however, as we believe our target audience to be Males from around 18 – 21.  

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? 

I don’t think our film would be produced by a major Hollywood Studio, I think it would be more likely to be produced by a smaller studio, perhaps Warped or Film 4. However I do think it could be released as quite widely available across the UK as, even as a low cost production, I think it could be at least entertaining to the majority of the British public. In some ways, our level of production is similar to that in a low cost film such as Paranormal Activity, which though only a small production still is one of the most popular low production films to date.  

I think at the very least our Film would be a popular indie release, and it would most likely be released for the story line and the developing relationship with the characters, making the film more relatable. I think there would be a possibility for a Game production from the film, however a franchise or too much merchandise would be unlikely as the characters have no specific costume and are wearing casual everyday clothing, making merchandise such as toys/action figures or play sets generic and dull, and hence won’t sell. 

4. Who would be the audience of your media product? 

I think the audience would be males from 18-21 but of course it will appeal to some women,  though my reason for thinking males from 18-21 is because the main characters are all male, roughly 18-20 years old, there’s  a lot of gore in the film and the personalities of the characters will be stereotypical of action films. Another reason for my belief of the age is because the idea is similar to dawn of the dead and 28 days later and their audience is around this age.  Our audience research shows that the film is popular with teenagers around our age of both male and female gender. I think our film would be classification 18 due to frequent strong language and scenes of violence and gore, although it was written with cert.15 in mind. 

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/18-2 

5. How did you attract/address your audience? 

I think particular points in our film such as when Joey saves the small girl would appeal to the female audience from 18-21 and the section when the characters are fighting for survival against the cannibalistic police would appeal more the male section of the audience and perhaps scare some of the younger audience members, I also think that the first part of the film, which we recorded, would scare some audience members and appeal more to the male part of the audience. The camera angles used in the first part of the film, which we filmed, don’t really follow the characters points of [Picture]view but show, what is believed to be, their last moments. I think this gives the audience a sense of despair because they think that’s just what happens, that the characters die not knowing of the fate of the world, where as it’s the opposite. Which then gives the impact of hope when they survive and by the time they see them struggling again they will feel more aligned with the characters which will give a stronger emotional response.  The still image to the right is Joey finding blood and showing the others, however this blood is never shown to the audience giving a sense of suspense and also the misty set gives suspense as anything could be hiding in it.  

6. What have you learnt about technology from the process of constructing the product? 

I have learnt that the HD1000 camera has very low quality inbuilt sound capabilities but records video in very high quality. The filming process was actually quite simple due to the tripod being easy to set up and very stable when panning the camera from left to right and up and down however it did take a while to get the camera on a level surface at the correct height due to the nature of a tripod and we worked on rough terrain in a woods in Barnsley.  When filming the main trouble wasn’t with the equipment it was with the mud and wet terrain, whilst filming several times I slipped and panned the camera up when I grabbed to steady myself.   

The editing software – Final Cut – is very easy to use and most of the work I did on the editing was just remembering the processes I’d used in School for my GCSE Media Studies. I found the effects used for colour correction useful for the editing of the forest scene at the opening as it made the film look more eerie and scary.  Our initial intention was to record the music ourselves at a studio owned by a friend of ours but unfortunately time was short so we had to use some royalty free music provided by the College.  

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

I think compared to our initial preliminary task this product was much better carried out as we storyboarded it, planned the camera angles, researched into the genre by watching similar films such as Dawn of the Dead and 28 days later, this helped us produce the film because we had inspiration from other popular Zombie films and therefore knew we wanted the editing and story to be similar to them.  And this, obviously, helped the editing process to run smoother.  Our use of match on action shots has improved because before the action was quite ill matched in the video, where as now the editing is correct down to a millisecond, this is shown with the two images from our film where one of the characters is drinking tea whilst listening to a radio broadcast where the coming zombie infection is underrated by the broadcast.  

I think we felt more comfortable using the equipment during filming because we had more time to become accustomed with it during our practice shops. And we also became more accustomed with the editing software and its shortcuts during the editing process and I became accustomed to using “Livetype” which I made use of to create the title sequence. 

I feel that our end product fulfilled the criteria and I’m very proud of the editing used and the timing of the music which was used in the final product, I think the final product worked very well and I would be proud to show it as it is to an audience.