Evaluation of Shinigami Film

1) In what way does your media project use, develop or challenge forms and convections of media products?

The ways in which our film incorporates generic conventions, in specific scenes are the shots of the Shinigami whilst tailing Corey, it’s a handheld shot, as is the shot usual to horror films when a person is being followed by another persons or something unknown. Our film challenges and develops these convections by using a blend of standard tripod shots, to capture shots of Corey walking normally, then with a mix of handheld shots to add a feel of the unknown. The use of conventions indicate the sub-genre of our film, they do this by giving the user a mysterious character, whom is following Corey, which builds on the convention of a horror film. The use of conventions also indicate which films have influenced our work, these are films such as Predator, with the Predators heat vision POV shots. We had this a rough guide, as the Predator stalks his prey, you never see it until late on, but throughout the film, he stalks the main party, you see his POV shots from up in the trees, this is effective as it builds a sort of being watched sense to the film, it builds fear in the viewer as to what could be following.

2) How does your media project represent particular social groups?
The social groups represented in our film in terms of gender, age, class and race are The entire cast is male, but if there were an entire film, there would be a minimum of one female as to avoid sexism. I believe it is/ is not stereotypical, the characters in the car are both stereotyped as typical petty criminals, drug usage, small crime, relaxed attitude, even in a criminal act. I believe the character played by Corey is not a stereo type, he is shown, with the appearance of a modern hoodlum, but his character is the complete opposite. This links to our target audience because, its unusual but yet also fitting. As we have two stereotyped characters, and one character that blows conventions.

3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
In my opinion our film could not be produced by a major Hollywood Studio because the theme of the film is supposed to be more of a cult film, such as Donnie Darko and Death Note, and other films that fit into this category. There are/ aren’t many similar products to ours, that’s because the idea for out film came from a cult Japanese TV series/film/book. So its quite a Niche in the market. Our film would be released straight onto DVD, or so I presume so, as its such a unique movie, I doubt the cinema revenue would be that high. We believe our film has no opportunity for merchandising, except, if the characters developed into more and outlandish, then cos-play would work I guess.. It wouldn’t relate to the mise-en-scene of our film because the merchandise will be of the characters as that is what the film is focused on. For our film, I would recommend Newmarket films, this is the company the distributed Donnie Darko, so it has past connections with cult based films.


4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
Comparing the age and gender of our target audience, it links well to our style of film because the main character is around the age of our target audience, and we hope the plight of the protagonist can be related to the viewer in some way. Similar style of films to ours appeal to the same target audience, this is because they are witty, they usually have a psychological element to them, like a twist, or something abnormal. We believe that they should class our film as a thriller, as its supposed to be a suspenseful film.

5) How did you attract/address your audience?
Linking back to our audience profile, there are points that would appeal to or terrify certain audiences, the main aim was to create a film, that was psychological, but exciting and unique, we all liked the idea of a greater being, so how about using this as our twist and USP. This is why we think there should be a certificate of 15, this is so the amount of language/violence need not be limited too much to allow really young children to see the film, as we would like the film to bee seen in it entirety of how it was imagined.
The audience are put in the position of the Shinigami they witness the possession of Corey, to prevent his death.

6) What have you learnt about technology from constructing the product?
There are some strengths of using small camera, these are they are easily portable, so they are good to use in heavily wooded areas like the ones where we were filming. On the other hand, the weakness’ are the lack of a sufficient microphone for noise recording. During filming we encountered one or two problems, the first was the weather, we decided to film across two days, seen as we were in a wooded area, the floor was wet and muddy. And the lighting could be different. The second was the speed limit with the car, we were not allowed to go above 30, but we needed a fast car scene And We resolved them, we filmed the majority of the bit in the wood when the weather was dry, on the wet day we did most of the filming that involved the car. And the second problem, we resolved this by driving at the speed limit, but then speeding the video up in the video editing software on the PC. Our editing software was a weakness because it was adequate, but the effects that we wanted were not really available. On the other hand, it made it easy to just drag and drop what we wanted and where abouts on the timeline the clip was to be played.

7) Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
During our planning stage, researching the genre and storyboarding, the detailed planning helped us to produce the film efficiently because we knew what we wanted to do, any changes that had to be made could be identified at the point of storyboarding. Since learning more about different types of shots, we can say that making a film takes a lot of thinking, to get the correct type of camera shots and to make them flow effectively. I feel I am more confident with the equipment because I have learnt how to use the cameras and the iMovie software. I feel that the final product was quite a success, it followed our original storyboard quite well, and flowed well, at times it can be a little confusing, but it is the first two minutes after all, we needn’t reveal everything early on.

By James Hewitt