Evaluation 4) Who would be the audience for your product?

The certificate for our film would be 15+ as by looking at other audiences and institutions, it showed that their films were also similiar with the age (with some being 18 because of their genre). We believe that some scenes would be inappropriate for younger viewers for example the crushing of the pills and making of a poisonous substance. However, as ours isn't a thriller on its own, it isn't necissary for the certificate to be 18. Our audience can relate to many gratification theories to our product, for example, the main one being 'personal relationships' as some may have the same issues and try to relate to the characters within the film, or 'diversion' where people tend to escape from their everyday lives.
The opening builds up suspense and aims to keep you hooked from the very start, and we know (as being teenagers ourselves) that we can get bored very easily so if something isn't as eye-catching in the beginning, we wouldn't want to continue watching it. Also by understanding that the majority of our responses from the market research preferred the opening to build up suspense, we aimed to apply it to our final product. The first two minutes of a film are essential, as it needs to catch your attention so that the audience can feel a part of the film. We took all these considerations into account to make our final product.
It is a stereotypical assumption that most boys tend to like thrillers, whilst the girls swayed to the dramas so we knew this would appeal greatly to both genders. Having done our first edit, we received audience feedback (from our class and people we knew both in and out of college) which showed both males and females liking the opening. We decided to take their notes and suggestions on board and adapt to what we believed would be the best outcome and managed to complete our final product.Just before we made our first edit, one main thing that needed to be changed were the credits as the colour and font was illegible as it clashed with the background, so we changed that to big and bald white writing so it was clear for all to see.
One of the feedback comments we received were "the music worked well" which made our decision clear that we should work with it and change our rushes to expand our first edit into our final piece.

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

There are many institutions that may have distributed our product as many institutions are now vertically integrated with what they produce (conforming to more than one genre) to engage a wider audience. 
Obsessed, our researched product was distributed by Screen Gems Pictures. 

They are an American subsidiary company of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Screen Gems produces and releases films that fall between the wide-release movies traditionally developed and distributed by Columbia Pictures and those released by Sony Pictures Classics. Many of its releases are of the horror, thriller, action, and comedy genres. I think they would have produced our product because our film genre conforms to what they seem to specialise in. They produced other films such as “Vacancy” and “The Messengers” which are two completely different film types however they all follow the typical codes and conventions of a thriller film and I think our film would appeal to this institution. The certificate for Obsessed was 12A, Vacancy 15 and The Messengers also a 15. Our film would clearly fit into their institution as our target audience was aimed towards 15-18 year olds, therefore would hold a 15 certificate.

Furthermore I think our film product would attract other media institutions as our second researched product, Prom Night, was produced by Alliance Films which is a Canadian production company who have produced a diverse amount of films; therefore our product would have no problem in falling into their category. They grossed a profit of $57,197,876 worldwide for Prom Night, which shows that that genre was popular and successful, and should hope our product will follow its 
 lead too. 

Evaluation 2) How does your product represent particular social groups?

Our product represented a few social groups such as females, general interests in romance/drama/thriller films and those with relationship issues. We presented a breakup between the couple which we think teenagers can reflect on as it happens a lot in this day and age.

 

However, our main focal social group represented is teenagers. Our film shows how a young romance can swivel out of control and turn into an obsession leading to inexplicable consequences. It gives the audience an insight of the thoughts of a teenager that is going through a harsh breakup. The representation of a vulnerable teenage girl shows severe emotions spiralling out of control. This can be seen as a stereotypical view of an archetypcal female as they are known to be quite emotional and sensitive, expecially over situations such as this.

However, this may solely conform to the female gender as opposed to males, which is why we believe that by making our protagonist the antithesis of a hegemonic female will target a larger audience; the males. I think this is presented effectively through the idea of using crushed pills, having an enigmatic effect onto the audience.

Furthermore, our decision to present teenagers was purely due to our market research results, we thought if we followed through what they desired from our results, then we would satisfy our target market and audience. The mise-en-scene followed through perfectly as the setting was in a messy teenage room, and seeing as Bethenay is a teenage girl, nothing needed to be done as her room was messy as it is!

The music is of an R&B genre which can present the youth as it is young and current which is something they conform to when listening to music. Also a lot of people said it was catchy as it was a beat that would stay in the mind for a long time which is exactly what we wanted, to be remembered.

Evaluation 1) In what ways does your product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real products?

Media as evaluation 1)

View more presentations from comedykid.

First Draft - Unfinished film opening + audience feedback

when our first draft deadline was due, we uploaded it onto social networking websites such as YouTube and Facebook in order to recieve responses as part of our audience feedback. This way, we would know what to edit, develop and change. Furthermore, at this point we hadn't thought of a clear ending, so this would give us an opportunity to gather ideas from others in order to make it look the best we could.

Audience Feedback

The responses we recieved were pretty positive, which we were more than pleased about. My very good friend Islah Rahman is studying and practising in the media, therefore was able to give me back constructive critisism which i took into consideration for our final edit.

We also received feedback from our peers, which we hoped would give us an insight of what we could change or add to improve our final film sequence.

The summary of Alex's response was:

"the music worked well"

"the final cut into the title was really good and builds suspense for the continuation of the rest of the film.  We want to know what happens next"

"It was really good, I enjoyed it"

Company Logo

To begin our filming we needed something to inspire us and to start us off.

What better than a Company Logo?

Our company logo simply represents the members of our team. Beth, Anika, Licia and Daniel. we took the initials of our name to get the word "BALD" and was designed by Daniel and Beth on Adobe Illustrator. Our logo is simple yet effective as it stands out, therefore rememberable and represents us as a group. The background is an effect which looks like a blood splatter which reflects some of the codes and conventions of a thriller film.

Preliminary Task (script & storyboard)

Here is our set Preliminary Task and storyboard which follows. This task was set to help us get use to the cameras and its shot types. We focused on the main three shot types which were 180 degree rule, shot reverse shot and match on action. This also helped use to familiarise ourselves with the Apple Macs as our group hadn't used them before. We learnt how to crop, cut, insert and use many more functions on the programme 'Adobe Final Cut' which could later help us to apply onto our film.

 

Storyboard and Script