Task 1- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and coventions of real media products?

The tittles in our film conform to most real media products by having the production team first. This is a feature of Hollywood films.

We also show the directors name as is the norm in Hollywood films. But unlike Hollywood films, these are the only opening credits as we wanted to keep the wording to a minimum so as to keep the audiences attention.

Our sequence challenges most real media products as ours are just one continue tracking shot. Whereas most films now use an edgy and fast cutting style when editing. The main point of focus in the sequence is the diary so the camera stays on the diary for a number of seconds before moving on; this shows its importance to the audience so it becomes an Enigma code for the film.

In this part of the sequence it conforms to most real media products openings as it shows some of who the character is (the pictures on the wall) but does not give it all away. The mise-en-scene of the room conforms to that of a horror film.

We have tried to subvert what the audience think is going to happen, as the camera tilts down the rope then comes onto the head of a doll rather than the head of a person.

At this point of the sequence there is a long tracking shot across the floor which conforms to most horror films with blood and gore. The way ours challenges most media products is our film uses dolls rather than people. This was an artistic choice as well as the fact that we had a limited budget.

This point subverts most Hollywood films by technically giving away the story at the start of the film. But we feel that this will still build tension throughout the rest of the film because the audience will not know who or why this person has killed themselves. This is called an Enigma code as it makes the audience want to know more about why that has happened, which builds interest and tension.

The title of the film comes up at the end of the opening sequence conforms to most media products. As it is the name of the film and the style of the font conforms to most horror films.

Task 2- How does your product represent particular social groups?

“Elisabeth’s Diary” is about a teenage girl with some mental and social issues. She uses her diary as a way to release pain and anger. Although the film strongly realise on the horror aspect of the youth being murdered, it will also look into the stress and strains placed on teenagers everyday and how close some of them come to snapping and what happens to those who do. Another film that shows when a teenager snaps is in “the ring”, when a girl “goes crazy” and ends up killing her mothers horses and then is killed herself but comes back to life to kill more. In ours the girls’ diary kills people, she goes crazy, kills herself but the murders continue. Therefore both products represent mental health issues effecting teenage girls. In “final destination” there is a sense of audience anticipation, we as an audience know that when we are introduced to a character they are more than likely going to be killed off. We want to try and achieve that same level of audience anticipation in our film. Therefore we represented our characters death in the first scene because we wanted to build up the suspense and tension in the same way as “final destination”.

The “difficult of a teenager” is a popular theme for TV shows and movies. Television shows like “skins” and “sugar rush” also look in into the struggles of teenage life, with episodes that include themes like: sex, weight, popularity, sexuality, race, intelligence, money, drugs, drink, suicide, death, dysfunctional families and metal health. “Elisabeth’s Diary” will mainly cover popularity and mental health and how one impact on the each other. Teenagers in media are often portrayed in a bad light; our film will try to show all sides of the story to show that not all teenagers deserve the label they get stamped with. When I was coming up with the film I choose the protagonist to be a teenager because I am and therefore am going through some of the things which the character would. I also chose it to be based around teenagers as it makes the storyline more interesting and the cast would mostly be around the same age as the target audience. The protagonist in “Elisabeth’s diary” would be autistic. I did some research into Autism and its effects on teenagers, I thought the symptoms and how it makes people act fitted perfectly with the way we wanted to portray Elisabeth. Here is a few sections I found on autism which I thought explained why Elisabeth would act the way she does in our film.
· It is difficult for autistic children at any age, but the teenage years can be especially challenging. Autism is a disorder that manifests itself with the individual having trouble communicating and managing a variety of social situations. Coupled with this, there are the repetitive behaviours and difficulty with emotional control. The teen years are perhaps the most social time of our lives. It is a time where teenagers are learning about them selves, and are moving rapidly toward adulthood. This is an incredibly social time where what you say and how you act are very important in the eyes of your peers. This is also precisely the time where autistic teens face some of the most stressful situations of their young lives.
· It can be at this age that most teenagers become aware how different they are from their peers. They may notice that they don’t have many or any friends
· Autism causes a problem in communication; most autistic teens do not learn how to behave according to sociological norms through experience.
· The inability to fit into proper social situations can be traumatic and lead to a tendency to disengage from a certain situation, whether it is related to play, school, or work
Sourced from http://answers-about-autism.info/

Task 3- What kind of Media institution might distribute your media product?

I think our film “Elizabeth's Diary” should be distributed by a major Hollywood film studio as this way we would have access to better funding and more A list actors. By having A list actors the film will get more interest as the actors will have there own fans who will go to see them in any film. I think a good institute to distribute our film would be ‘Go Fish Pictures’. ‘Go fish Pictures’ is the specialty film division of the DreamWorks SKG film studio. They have distributed films such as “Casshern” and “The Chumscrubber”. This division is good because it has made films with both action and a good storyline. I want this because although I want to have access to the special effects and action I also want there to be a strong and interesting story line which is not the norm in “high concept films”. Another institute which may be good would be “Twisted Pictures”. Twisted Pictures is a production company which is part of “Lionsgate”, mainly creating films of the horror genre. It gained wide attention through the production of the Saw series. They would have the most expertise in the horror side of “Elizabeth’s Diary”
This of course would be the best case scenario, as I making this film I would be a new film maker it is very unlikely that a Hollywood film studio would make my film. So I also looked into the English independent film industry. I think that Warp would also be a good option to make “Elizabeth’s Diary”. They have also made popular English teen horror film “donkey punch” and “This is England”. Although the film would not have access to a large amount of funding, we would still have access to high levels of expertise. Warp also have connections to 'Film 4' (an example of this is 'this is England which was co-funded by 'fim 4')it would also be advertised and shown on their television network. Also this is improve "Elizabeth's diary"'s distribution possibilities as 'film 4' have links to production, distribution and exhibition in Europe through their affiliates..

Task 4- who would be the audiance for your media product?

For our thriller “Elizabeth’s Diary” we decided to aim our film at the largest target audience as that would bring in the most profit. This group is males, aged in their late teens and early to mid twenties, they are the group that spend the most money on going to the cinema and buying /renting films; so we thought it would be a good idea to aim our film at them. Our film is aimed at very masculine orientated audience. The audience for our film are most likely still in education whether it be school, collage or university or at the start of a new job. So there outgoings will be less so there for having more disposable income and free time. Although typically horror films are aimed at just males we wanted to make the secondary audience females. This is another reason why our protagonist is female. As the female audience would be able to relate to her better. This is also because a lot of the time couples watch horror films together. Horror films are often linked to the emo and gothic scene.
This is because it is a gory/slasher genre, with a lot of killing, mind games and twisted story plot and ending. In some ways it will be similar to the horror/ thriller “saw” but with more of a story line to it. It will be aimed and advertised at all social classes but it is most likely to appeal the most to people of a “lower” social class, again due to the gore and violence involved. So it will be shown in bigger cinemas like Vue and Odeon and not cinemas smaller and more expensive cinemas like the everyman and the electric cinema.

Task 5- How did you attract/ address your audiance?

How did you attract/address your audience

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Task 6- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Task 7- Looking back at prelimary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Looking back on the preliminary I feel as if my media skills have progressed when now looking at the full final product of “Elizabeth’s Diary”. In “Elizabeth’s Diary” I worked with the same people as those who I worked with in the preliminary task, as a group it is clear that in the time between them our media skills have improved a great deal.
In the prelimary task we where given the storyboard, the text, the exact shots we should do and told where to shoot. Whereas in the horror task we came up with all these factors ourselves over a number of weeks, putting together a project file. We also thought more about the cast for “Elizabeth’s Diary”. We wanted a typical female horror look; dark hair, pale skin and big eyes. We wanted her to have a reasonable level of acting ability and we also needed to make sure she was free the whole shoot day. Casting in the preliminary task was non-existent, we grabbed two people who where free in that hour session without though of gender, look or acting ability. When coming up with the story for “Elizabeth’s diary” I was influenced by other horror films such as “the ring” and “the grudge” but I wanted the main protagonist to be a female and I wanted her to be portrayed in a better light then the stereotype of teenage girls.
When shooting and setting the preliminary we just found a room which was not being used at that time, which was not very good for lighting or space. The room was very small and there was one window which even when we light the room still cast a shadow of the camera onto the set. We used the table and chair that where already in the room and the camera box as a prop. When choosing the location and set for “Elizabeth’s Diary”. We had lots of different ideas which included shooting in a barn, but finally we decided to shoot the whole thing inside the film studio as this way would have full control of the lighting and the mise-en-scene of the whole set. This took a lot of time and careful planning as we had to provide everything that would be needed to build a believable and effective set. We took weeks deciding the props that would be needed and who would be able to get them in advance. We also spent the day before shooting setting up the dolls. We also had to set the diary a long time in advance as this was the main point of our film and we wanted it to be perfect, we had an art teacher at our school do it for us off the ideas we gave him.
There was no planning done into the costume and makeup worn by the actors in preliminary task, they just kept on whatever they had put on that day. In “Elizabeth’s Diary” we already knew we wanted a typical ‘sweet but deadly’ horror look. So we chose a simple black dress, bought hair gel to give her hair a damp look and bought white foundation. As it would happen we only used a shot if her shadow and her feet but we felt it was better to be prepared.
In the filming of “Elizabeth’s Diary” we took a long time to set up the shot as it was one continues shot. This meant planning what we wanted to happen in advance, what we wanted the audience to see and at what angle we wanted them to see it. So to do this we drew up numerous storyboards before we came up with the one we thought would be the most effective. On the day of shooting it took a long time to set up the tracks for the camera to go on as we wanted it to run smoothly and to be effective. We decided to go with one shot because we wanted to get everything in the room in one shot, as if a person is walking around the room looking at everything. We felt that this would build tension as the audience would feel like they are in the room. In the preliminary task we where given the storyboard did that and only doing a few ideas of our own.
Comparing the two tasks it is clear that our ability to use sound and sound effects has improved. In the preliminary task we only used the diegetic sound that we had recorded using the small mic on the camera. We just recorded the dialogue between the two characters, dropping the case and the door opening and closing and none of this was altered when editing. These sounds where not bad quality but did not give much us most scope to be creative in editing. When creating the soundtrack for “Elizabeth’s diary” we sourced sounds and music from ‘sound cut pro’ and used sounds we had recorded on the day using a boom mic. A boom mic picks up a clearer and crisper sound than the small mic on the front of the camera. When creating “Elizabeth’s diary” we wanted the sound to build tension and convey a creepy atmosphere. We wanted there to be a realistic ambient sound for the room so we recorded the sound in the room for a few minuets after we had finished filming making sure everyone stayed silent. We also recorded the sound of the door opening, Petrie walking then climbing onto the stool, the rope being tightened, the stool rocking and falling and her feet twitching. We only used a few of these sounds but we wanted to make sure we had everything we might need available. When editing “Elizabeth’s diary” on final cut pro we removed all the sound to start from scratch so it could portray exactly what sound we wanted and create more profession feeling to the sequence. We found a piece of music that we thought would fit perfectly to our piece as it sounded creepy yet when listing to it, it built tension and suspense. When putting in sounds like the sound of a door opening and took time to make sure it fitting perfectly to the image so it looked and sounded realistic. We wanted to build more tension with sounds like the door opening, the chair rocking and finally the stool falling and the neck breaking. To do this we emphasized the sound and made it louder the music and ambient sound.
My skills on final cut pro have improved a great deal from the time when we edited the preliminary task. In the preliminary task we used very basic cutting and no after effects and even then we regularly needed help. Whereas when we where editing “Elizabeth’s diary” I have become a lot more confident and more tech savvy. We used some after effects, put in many sounds and changed sound levels. As our product was just one continues tracking shot there was no cutting needed but we had many different versions filmed to choose from to find the perfect one. We did use fading at the beginning and at the end of the sequence for an effective and more professional look. This was also so that the audience’s attention was drawn to the diary (the most important stimulus) as it is the first thing that comes into focus. At the end we fading into and out the title of “Elizabeth’s diary” this is so

that the audience get the feeling that the opening sequence is tied onto the rest of the film.

Audience feedback

We posted out video on youtube and our facebook pages. Here our some of the comments we got on "Elizabeth's diary".

stephaniemareen: i really like the pace of editing and the titles. Great thriller.

LegasyOleg: Very creepy opening. I've jumped on the chair when heard this knock-knock sound! Awesome and really thrilling piece

hurtwoodhousemedia: that's so creepy!! I really like it!!

hurtwoodhousemedia: the doll hanging is my favorite part...well planned and thought out video love it!

Frankie Rooney: Babesss this video is soooo goooood!! it should be made into a real film....loved it!

DT896: my fave part of the video is when the diary pages turn over themselves! Really effective title sequence....the neck breaking sound makes me jump every time XD

Chris Murphy: wish my school could make a media video as good as this, it's really scary haha, but you probably could have lit the beginning track better to make it less dark. But overall really sick vid :)

Poppy Perrin: The picture of the doll on the wall creeped me out so much lmao! LOVE IT!



By these comments it is clear that we targeted the right audience as this is the peer group that left comments on the video.

Account of shoot day

The setting up for the shoot location started the day before. We were using the studio and wanted the Mise-en-scène to look like a twisted child’s den with props such as cut, burnt and covered in blood children’s toys. We chose to use the studio as our location because we could have complete control of everything and would not be effective not natural light or the weather. The only real problem was the amount of time it took to set the set because we had to start completely from scratch. Although it was time consuming we had the ability to build the environment exactly how we wanted it. We started to make these props the night before filming. On the day of shooting we took four and a half hours to set up the location. This included laying out the tracks for the camera, the strategic placing of the props including the toys and diary, the panting of the pictures on the wall and the setting up of the swing (which was used to give the illusion of hanging) we feel this created an effective Mise-en-scène for the shoot. The same way that the Mise-en-scène in “the ring” when the girl is sat in stool with her long black hair in the middle of a white room.
. The set was quite similar to our last one-shot story board, but in the story board we had only diary pages and in our shoot we thought it would be more effective to use toys and pictures as well as this gave it more dimension. We did this by having some props on the floor, some flat on the wall and one hanging from the ceiling. I feel as if we were very well prepared for are shooting day, every one knew what they had to do and got on with it, also that we did our props the day before so that we did not waste time.
We had decided to do our thriller in a one shot style. We used a continuous tracking shot that tilted up and down as if someone was looking around the room. We decided this because we thought it would help for continuity and build tension. One of the main problems we encountered was that it was hard to keep the camera movements fluid as it moved across the tracks, we managed to overcome this by rehearsing it and moving the tracks slightly to make it easier for the camera to move along them. My favourite part of the shot is when the camera tracks over the pictures on the wall and then the rope comes into the shot, the camera then tilts down the rope till a hanging baby toy which has bright red blood over its head, which is a effective juxtaposition between the darkness of the rest of the room and colours. At first we placed are props on the wall to high up on the wall, when doing a test run with the camera we saw that this did not look right so we moved them further down to make it easier for the camera to pick them up.
We had a very basic costume for our actress; a simple black dress as it would turn out we never saw the actress’s body but it was good to be prepared. We chose a simple black dress because it was unobtrusive yet slightly creepy. The destroyed children’s toys gave the set more depth then are original idea of just the diary pages. The toys were used to portray the torched mind of the girl and the people we will die later on in the film.
We only had one cast member in our film. We needed a youngish girl, with pale skin and long dark hair. We wanted her to look a little bit like the girl from “the ring” with a creepy edge. There where a few girls in the school who fit the mould of what we were looking for. In the end we choose I girl called Petri Kimber, as she not only had the look but was a strong actress as well. We also wanted are main actress to be a teenager young adult as this is the age of the target audience and by this they would relate to her better. As it ended up on the shoot day we only saw her shadow and at the end her feet. Both of these did look effective as she has a slight frame which was clear in the shadow and small feet which made her look like a child when she was hanging.
We used quite basic lighting as we thought it would be more realistic and therefore more effective. We had a softer spot light over the area where he hanging was going to take place and we used a bare light bulb hanging over the room so the lighting looked like a loft. We also used backlights behind the girl to cast her shadow on the wall when she opens the door and walks through the room.
There were a few certain sounds that we needed to record so that we could use them in post production. We first recorded the ambiance of the room which is always important to make as realistic as possible, we did this by just recording the sounds of the room for a short amount of time. We also wanted to get the sound of the stool rocking, the rope tightening, chocking and feet twitching. We recorded these in the same way, making sure the room was completely silent. The other sounds we are going to use we will source from sound effects files.
My role on the shoot day was director; I made sure everyone knew what they were meant to be doing and when they should be doing it. I helped in the setting up of the set and had the final say on what I thought worked and what I thought did not. I also was watching the monitor to have an idea how everything would translate onto camera and then onto screen. Every helped out in different ways; every one helped in the setting up of the set, Ross was in control of the fan which turned the pages of the diary, Alex was operating the camera and TK was making sure the cables didn’t get tangled. We all worked well as a team because everyone knew what they were meant to be doing and did not get in each others way. Every one also was willing to help out when needed.
I was very pleased with the shot that we ended up getting at the end of the day. It was exactly as we had pictured it if not better. It was a slight veneration to the storyboard as I mentioned earlier but this made for a more dynamic sequence. The day went without a hitch due to good planning and excellent team work.