Final Product: Necromancy

EVALUATION: IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP, OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

In comparison to previous thrillers analysed, our thriller is not to as good a standard. Obviously this is due to difference in equipment, time taken to film, props available, etc. However the proffessional thrillers and our thriller do have the same key concepts such as audience suspense, female being the victim and a sense of the unknown. We chose to make a thriller based around witchcraft/voodoo as we felt the idea was original and complimented our audience feedback that they would like to see a thriller with a different narrative. We made our decisions of what to include/exclude based upon our storyboard and audience research. Eg- If we felt a shot was too bright we excluded it as our feedback told us that dark lighting was preffered. Our narrative is clear from the beginning due to the focus on props and long camera shots allowing the audience to absorb all of the information. I feel the opening sequence is succesful in the sense that it creates suspense, the sound is synchronised, the narrative is clear and original, and the characters are not unlike many other professional thrillers. On the other hand it could be argued that our narrative borders the realm of the horror genre however this can also be a debate for many other famous thirllers and depends upon how the audience percieves our codes and connotations. Section twelve discusses in  more detail our specific connotations and codes used, i feel that these construe the correct message/feeling of suspense and the fear of the unknown is played upon largely in our thriller both through narrative and through connotations.

EVALUATION: HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?

Social Group	Planned Representation	Constructed Representation
Females (1)	Weak, Vulnerable, ‘’Damsel in distress’’	The character of Lucy portrays this representation as she is subjected to the injuries in the narrative and is also the ‘fresh faced youthful’ character (as explained in the analysis). Her body language shows her fear and shows that she is vulnerable. This represents females as ‘weak’ as they are not able to cope with injuries/blood and being alone.
Females (2)	Manipulative, Clever, ‘Dark Side’ to them	The character of the witch  portrays this representation as she is the cause of Lucys injuries and problems. The  narrative of the film involves the witch planning her next attack – showing a manipulate side to the female gender (or so she portrays).
Teenagers	Thoughtless, Carefree, Naive	This is shown in the opening sequence by the actions of Lucy: naively  leaving her friends to walk home alone through a forest. This would instantly ring alarm bells in any sensible adults head but a teenager does not think this they are just focused on getting home.

EVALUATION : WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT? AND HOW DID YOU ATTRACT ADDRESS YOUR AUDIENCE?

Our target audience was decided after a group discussion. We decided upon age fifteen plus females and males, 'yuppies'. We decided on a youthful target audience as we ourselves are of that age and it would be easier to gain information from this target audience in comparison to an older or a more niche target audience. As we found from our audience research: ''the audience preferred the comedy genre with thriller rated second best. Their favourite part of a thriller is the feeling of suspense and they prefer thrillers that involve mind games. The majority of our audience had seen 15+ thrillers and would like to see both types of lighting included in a thriller. A high number of those questions did not consider the ocean films as thrillers and almost all of the audience would like more variety in thrillers''. We considered this information when deciding on narrative, camera shots, characters and location.

SECTION TWELVE : ANALYSIS OF COMPLETED THRILLER

In our completed Thriller we used different effects on the programme premiere pro. The main effect used was one entitled "ghosting''. This cause the images to double and blur. Not only did this effect highlight the fact that the scene was a dream and made things look unreal, it also created the eerie atmosphere we wanted to cause for our audience. We feel the effect epitimised the feedback we recieved from our audience. The character of the witch is dressed entirely in black this is the steroetypical 'baddy' colour as black has clear connotations of evil and death. Lucy is the stereotypical damsel in distress with long flowy hair and a fresh innocent face. These characters are shown mainly through costume. The setting of Lucys dream (the forest) is surrounded by dead leave and broken branches. This anchors the strong theme of death and danger within this thriller. During Lucys 'dreaming scenes' the camera is on a canted angle to represent Lucys frame of mind - disorientated. At the start of the film the title 'Necromancy' is shown in vivid white with a dark blue shadowing and black background. This not only gives a 'thriller-ish' look to the opening sequence but also represents the ideology of innocence the white writing) being surrounded by evil (dark colours surrounding the writing). The soundeffects throughout the thriller create tension. Various sounds can be heard such as ghostly breathing, and screams. Also, the soundtrack has a sort of 'pulse' beat, this represents a heartbeat which has connotations of life/death situations. Some audience members may also pick up on the connotation of the heartbeat being Lucys - beating faster as she feels more scared in the forest. We fade to black at the end of the opening but keep the scream playing through this. This was to create a sense of shock and worry within the audience as they want to know why the visual of Lucy has dissapeared but the scream remains - the fear of the unknown is used in this sense.

SECTION ELEVEN : AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

We selected 8 people at random who were in our target population of ages 15-18 female and male to watch our thriller.

We asked these four different questions;

From the opening sequence does it make you want to carry on and watch the rest of film, why?

What do you think is unique about our thriller?

Is there anything you would change about it ?

How did the soundtrack make you feel?

And we were given theese responses..

Amy:

I would watch the rest of the thriller because i like the themes, i like movies about witchcraft and i think the sound in the back ground is really hooking, i think the thriller was unique because the "killer" was a women and normally you expect them to be men, if i was too change anything it would maybe be the lighting cause it was a bit too dark and i liked the soundtrack because it was really scary and gripping!

Max: I think the thriller was good but i wouldnt watch the rest of it because i dont really like thrillers i prefer action movies. It was unique because i dont think i've ever heard of a thriller based around magic, its seems to be a sub genre of thriller like supernatural thriller. I wouldn't change anything about it the story seems interesting. The soundtrack was really good, had me scared at some points.

Bella: I would watch the rest of the rest of thriller because the character Lucy is around my age so i'd assume during the rest of the film she would be doing typical teenage things that i could relate to it makes the thriller more intense because its relatable and gripping because you can imagine yourself in Lucy's shoes, i think it was unique because of all the wiutchcraft stuff, if i was to change anything it would be that we dont see the identity of the witch, The soundtrack was amazing because it really fitted.

our target audience >

SECTION TEN : VIDEO LOG SHEETS

Shot number	Shot description	Shot length	Good take. Yes/no
1	Medium close up of girl sleeping in bed, was taken a few times just to make sure it was good.	3 seconds	no
2	“                                  ”	3 seconds	yes
3	“                                  ”	2 seconds	Yes we used this footage
4	“                                 ”	3 seconds	no
5	High angle shot of girl waking up in bed, decided to cut this out because the tape broke	3 seconds	no
6	Over the shoulder shot of witch writing	2 seconds	Yes we used this footage
7	Side shot of witch	2 seconds	Yes we used this footage
8	High angle shot of witch	3 seconds	No went blurry
9	“                                       ”		Yes we used this footage
10	Side shot of witch burning paper	8 seconds	No the tape was damaged and ruined the footage
11	“                                          ”	9 seconds	Yes we used this footage
12	Witch scene	3 seconds	Yes we used this footage
13	Witch scene	4 seconds	Yes we used this footage
14	“                                  ”	3 seonds	yes
15	“                                  ”	2 seconds	no
Shot number	Shot description	Shot length	Good take. Yes/no
16	Shot of girl with friend walking	2seconds	Yes we used this footage
17	Shot of girl hugging friend	2 seconds	Yes we used this footage
18	Girl walking through the woods towards the camera	3 seconds	Yes we used this footage
19	Shot of girl from behind in the woods	3 seconds	yes
20	Camera follows girl in the woods then to the trees. Edited by cutting out the transition from walking through woods to tree	16 seconds	Yes we used this footage
21	Close up of girl breathing, then from the side, cut during editing	6 seconds	No, never used this footage as it got damaged
22	Following the girl through words from the back	2 seconds	Yes we used this footage
23	Reverse shot following but from the front	3 seconds	Yes we used this
24	High angle shot of girl falling	2 seconds	Yes we used this footage
25	Medium close up of girl screaming	2 seconds	Yes we used this footage