WRITTEN EVALUATION

OUTCAST
By Callum OHara

In what ways does your media

product use, develop or
challenge forms and
conventions of real media
products?

The media product me and my group were tasked with creating this year is a film opening for a film in a
genre of our choice. The film opening we decided to create was that of a horror film opening. We
decided that we were going to stick to one of the genres oldest conventions, tension. In preparation for
this I personally went and watched multiple horror film openings from many different type of horror
movies. One that I found very inspiring was the Film opening for the 1978 film Halloween by John
Carpenter. This film became an instant classic back in 1978 when it was released and a big part of this
was through the tension that it created. In this film opening we follow and young boy from a first person
view angle; we see him first look through the windows of his house and then walk in, grab a knife and
go on to murder his sister. This created a huge amount of tension as we did not know why the young
boy was carrying a knife or what he was going to do.
This particular film opening also asked lots of
questions; why is the boy alone? Why would he
kill his sister? Why would he be using a knife in
general? All of these questions were very
valuable to the director as this is what grips an
audience and creates a connection between the
audience and the characters in the film. I also
then watched the 2007 remake of the film where
the opening scene consists us seeing an insight
into the boys life, him murdering his pet and
then being abused by his family when he goes
downstairs to breakfast. I felt like this was not
the direction I wanted to go in with our film
opening so this wasnt too much of a help to us.

My film took some inspiration as we used a point of view (POV) shot within the film opening,
something which has became somewhat of a convention within the horror genre. However, we put
a spin on this as in our opening we had the protagonists view portrayed instead of the antagonist.
Another convention which we stuck with was a secluded and dark setting. We gave the audience a
glimpse of a sub-urban area and then took that away within the last scene as the character is
taken into an isolated basement with minimal light. We decided to stick with this convention as we
felt that is is one which would be very beneficial to our opening. This is a convention which has
worked well in many films, including the Saw franchise. The first film mostly takes place in a
basement which is being used to keep two men captured; the location builds up a lot of dramatic
tension and adds to the film greatly.
The sound in our film greatly sticks with the horror genre. We firstly use a very gothic song at the
beginning of our film opening, the kind which is classical, slow paced and typical of the horror
genre. This is used in many films, including the 1978 Halloween mentioned earlier in this post. This
example of non-diegetic sound is very important to the horror genre as it is brilliant at creating
tension; without it, it would be very difficult to create a dramatic scene. Concerning diegetic
sound, we used an ambient soundtrack towards the end of the scene to create more tension within
the scene. This added to the scene as we needed to create some dramatic tension and we felt the
best way is doing this. It is hard to give a single example of a film which does this as almost every
single horror film ever uses an added ambience sound effect to add tension.

One way in which my groups film opening defies the horror convention is with our antagonist. The
beginning of the film shows the antagonist as being the zombie characters which we see but as
the film continues, we see the emphasis of the antagonist change from the zombie characters into
the government, however this isnt seen in the film opening. We felt as is if this would subvert the
genre and make it more interesting, rather than making the whole film stick to one genre. We felt
as if we changed one aspect of the film to put a twist into the film, doing this with the characters
would be perfect.

 How

does your media

product represent
particular social groups?

My film represents three social

groups:
Zombies?

Middle Class Men

Politicians

MIDDLE CLASS MEN

In our film the main protagonist is a middle class man. We see him coming home from his job, in a suit, where he sits
down and is about to take his medication. We then see that he has ran out and has ran out of money. From the
beginning of the film we see that this middle class man is hard working, he has came home from work and comes to a
nice, tidy looking house. This shows the audience that he puts a lot of effort into making money and does everything he
can; he is portrayed as hard working, educated and caring.
The house and the suits are the main factors for showing that the man is educated and has tried in life. The suit has
connotations of him working at an office, perhaps even a lawyer or estate agent. These are both well paying jobs, ones
he must have studied for. The character is presented as a man who has tried very hard in life, although he seems to be
someone who will not be pushed around. In the opening we see him arguing on the phone to the woman who has told
him that he cannot afford to pay for the medication. However, he is not portrayed as particularly brave as when he in
the basement, he is terrified of the zombie that he sees. Most people would be scared, but this does shed light on the
character not being a hero in the sense that he is brave within the first scene. This is true for many middle class men,
they are not portrayed as rough men within the media; this often is because of the stereotypical jobs middle class men
have. In the film we do rely on this particular stereotype as we want the audience to take the connotations of his suit as
him having a decently paid job.
We then see that the man is caring throughout the rest of the film; he is also seen to be more and more brave and
courageous as the film continues. These values are instilled in him when he realises that the zombie characters are not
the monsters that the government officials have told society. He begins to fight for the zombies in a bid to reach equality
and abolish the laws which are keeping the zombies out of the human populated cities and towns. This is reflective of
some middle class men and is definitely breaking down the stereotype of middle class men only caring about
themselves and their bank accounts. It is usually working class characters which are portrayed as freedom fighters of
sorts; this is refreshing as it breaks down a social barrier which is unreflective of the real world.

ZOMBIES
Zombies in our film are portrayed in two very different ways. Firstly, we see them as monsters; this is exactly what we want
the audience to think to start with. We do this by taking away their human features, namely their conscience and their ability
to be sentient. This however, changes straight after the film opening, where their character becomes interesting
After our protagonist escapes the basement, he comes across a city populated with zombies which when he meets, finds
out that they are not monstrous in any way except for their appearance. The zombies are very similar to the zombies you can
find on hit BBC 3 show In The Flesh where the zombies can be treated and be absolutely fine.
This, by some viewers, will be seen to be a social commentary on the way that African-American citizens in the mid 20 th
century by a large portion of the white population in America. Looking past the days of slavery, when this was a distant relic,
black people were still treated like second class citizens and segregated from the rest of society. Our film is eerily similar to
these days, where the zombies have had horrible propaganda spread about them by both government officials and racist
members of the American population. Similar stories such as the zombies being violent and dumb, were actually used
against African-Americans in a tragic miscarriage of justice and morality. Segregation fits into one of the key words we used
as inspiration for our storyboard; oppression. In a way, our zombies are a reciprocal of the
black population of America in most southern states within the
mid 20th century. Even if we just capture a microcosm of what
happened back then, we feel as if our film does its job in portraying
the injustices of the past. As segregation was such a big issue, we
decided to create a city where the zombies are forced to live.
This is also something prevalent in the mid 20th century,
as if black families were not forced to live in separate neighbourhoods
, they were forced to go to different schools, use different busses and
even forced to use separate bathrooms.

POLITICIANS
The politicians link in perfectly with the zombie metaphor for the wrongful treatment of African-Americans in
America in the mid 20th century. In this era we saw politicians actively fight against the rights of black people in
America; again we can link back to the film Selma, in which we see a Governor, George Wallace, who would not
allow black people to vote. This character will be reciprocated in a way in our film as we have a prime minister
who hates these zombies even though they are normal people.
I feel as if this character must be a monstrous character, someone who will be despised by the audience. I feel
like this is a fair representation of a social group who oppressed black people in America for decades. A
character we also based our main antagonist off is Frank Underwood from hit Netflix serious House of Cards,
which has been running since 2013. This character is evil, he will do anything to get into power whether it
means manipulating someone or even killing them. This type of ruthless character is perfect to play the role of
the antagonist as we definitely want our audience to have a huge hatred for this character.
Going back to the oppression in the mid 20th century,
as a group we felt as if this problematic group of people
deserve to be shown in a way which really reflects
this social group. We found this interesting whilst making
a treatment for our film as we were basing a character
off a social group, instead of a character falling into a
social group inadvertently. This actually helped us a lot
when creating the character as we knew exactly what
type of person we were creating the character from, it
gave us a huge advantage.

 What

kind of media
institution might
distribute your media
product and why?

Obviously the media institution who would be

distributing my film opening would be a big film
production company. For this me and some of my group
decided on choosing two production companies which
we would be interested in distributing our film;
Paramount Pictures and Lionsgate.

PARAMOUNT PICTURES
We decided that Paramount pictures would be a good company to go with as their films have a huge budget for
some of their films and also bring in a lot of money if profit from distributing these films.

Film

Budget in $

Box office takings in $

Cloverfield (2008)

25,000,000

80,000,000

Paranormal Activity 2
(2010)

3,000,000

84,000,000

The Devil Inside (2012)

1,000,000

53,000,000

Above is a chart which demonstrates some of the successes that have been made by paramount pictures within the
genre of horror. As you can see they have a range of budgets; more likely our film is going to require a large budget
due to the need of special effects and actors. Clearly Paramount pictures has a history of bringing horror films to the
big screen in a spectacular way. My group would be very interested with having paramount distributing our film
simply due to their experience; they clearly have always had a talent in making films successful. In this case, the
numbers speak for themselves, look for instance, at how much The Devil Inside made in the box office back in
2012 with a budget of only $1,000,000. This is a clear example of a successful horror film, which I hope our film
would replicate if it ever went to the big screen.
Our film would definitely need a huge amount of special effects, which Paramount made clear they are experts in, in
the 2008 film cloverfield, which became an instant cult classic. In this film we see a creature destroying a whole
first world city to pieces whilst thousands of people watch. We would need help with these special effects, especially
in creating thousands of zombie characters which would obviously be done in the editing stage as the budget for
thousands of extras would be phenomenally huge. We would also need some CGI for the city, which puts paramount
pictures as a perfect company to distribute our film.

LIONSGATE
Lionsgate is another production company which my group felt would be very beneficial to use to distribute our film. The
too have a bug budget for films and a rich past in creating and distributing horror films.

Film

Budget in $

Box office takings

in $

Saw III (2006)

10,000,000

80,000,000

Sinister (2012)

3,000,000

48,000,000

See No Evil (2006)

8,000,000

15,000,000

As previously states we would need a company which can invest a huge sum of money into creating our film, Lionsgate
could do just that. They have clearly got a background in creating successful horror films, as evident from the films in the
chart above. Saw III in 2006 made 8x its budget upon its release, a huge taking for the third instalment of a franchise
which people felt was being stretched even at this point. For this reason we think Lionsgate would be a financially viable
target for distributing our film.
Another reason we feel like Lionsgate would be a good option is that they are doing well in adapting to the modern
expectations of the horror genre. As seen in 2006, See No Evil made profit, but not as much as would be expected of a
Lionsgate film. The company obviously saw this and has since been very successful in staying relevant. Sinister in 2012
became a hugely popular film, evident from the $48,000,000 it made in the box office. This is just one example of a film
which Lionsgate created through thorough use of audience research. This is another tick in the box for lionsgate.
Finally we need a company which has good evidence of using special effects, namely CGI. Lionsgate has clearly used this
in the past with big blockbuster films such as the Hunger Games franchise, which may not be a horror but uses a
tremendous amount of CGI to create a dystopian future. This is exactly the type of post production facilities which we
would need in order to create a successful film. For this reason I feel that Lionsgate would be the best film company to
create and distribute our film.

 Who

would be the
audience for your media
product?

The audience for our film would be those who often watch horror films as well as people who enjoy a good and original narrative
within film. The age group we would be targeting would be 15-30; this is the age group that would be most interested in our
film so my group decided that it would be a good idea to market this audience specifically.
Firstly the main objective would be to bring in people who are fans of the horror genre, as this will be the main group of people
who will see the film. When creating the film, we were careful that we didnt push the genre too much, as people generally want
to watch something familiar to them. However, we ensured that we did in some aspects go against conventions as we didnt
want our film to be boring and clich. One of the ways we catered for this audience is adding in conventions such as the zombie
aspect. We felt as if adding an initial antagonist would cater for this audience hugely as they can expect something which they
are comfortable that they will enjoy; however, we have added a huge twist within this conventional character type as the
zombies have been twisted to be intelligent, sentient beings which have a conscience despite what the government had told
everyone. This twist makes the film interesting to even the most hardened horror fans as it is a refreshing theme which hasnt
really been developed in the past. This combination of putting a new spin on a timeless classic is something we really thought
about in pre-production.
We then move on to people who are not really fans of the horror genre.
We are catering for this group of people as we have developed a thoroughly
refreshing and interesting narrative. More than being a film full of jump
scares and tension filled scenes, the film my group created has a hugely
captivating narrative, one which brings the genre out of the stereotype of
gory yet lacklustre horror films. We feel that as the story is very original, we
would bring in an audience regardless of whether they are fans of the horror
franchise; I truly believe that this film has the potential to be a blockbuster film.
This is uncommon in horror films as many people shy away from them,
but I believe that this problem wouldnt effect us.

The age group we would be targeting is 15-30. This is because after some extensive research in pre-production, we found that
this is the age group most interested in horror films. This age group are those who use the cinema the most also, as between
these ages people are more likely to go the cinema as a social event. We catered for this audience by making the main
protagonist in this age group. People like films which they can relate to, so ensuring that the protagonist is within the age group
of our target audience gives the film a much better chance of being successful as the audience can empathise with the
protagonist. This is especially important within the horror genre as it is of utmost importance that a link is created between
audience and character, as the aspect of horror films which make them most scary is placing yourself in the situation of the
character within the scene.
One thing we lacked when catering for an audience is class. Our protagonist is within the middle class, which is slightly above
the working class, the main viewers of horror films. This is true because of the thrill that a horror film can entail is something
which is sought after by the working class stereotypically. The working class are statistically less educated than those classes
above them, which makes horror films where the narrative isnt too difficult to
understand more interesting too them; they use the film
for uses such as escapism. An aspect which we could have
improved is having the main character as a working class man,
but we felt that having a middle class man would be more
valuable to the narrative, a decision which took a lot of thought
and discussion.
Statistically it is males who watch the most horror films,
again this audience is catered for by the fact that the
main character is a male character. However, we felt like
making this film a male dominated one would have a huge
impact on the female audience which the deeper narrative
might bring in. Our film also fits into the category of gothic, which
is traditionally written for women. For this reason we ensured
that when creating our treatment we included plenty of female
characters to ensure there is not an offset in gender balance.
This will ensure as many people as possible watch our film, which
would obviously be the main goal.

How

did you
attract/address
your audience?

Social media has became a huge part of our society, especially in the age
group we are targeting, 15-30 year olds. One of the main social networking
platforms of recent is instagram. Instagram has recently hit 300,000,000
users, to put that into perspective, the population of the United Kingdom is
65,000,000. Instagram has almost five times as many users as the
population of the UK. This goes to show how many people use the site. I
feel as if branching out to social media is a great way of grabbing a huge
audiences attention, possibly even overnight with the opportunity of our
film opening going viral.
One way in which films gain attention on social media is when the actors
talk about their films, or give sneak peaks in their post. One of the most
famous actors who does this is Dwayne Johnson, The Rock. He is notorious
for posting sneak peaks of films he is to star in on his Instagram page,
building up a lot of hype for his role in the film. An example of this is the
film Central Intelligence which is due to release very soon in the UK. The
two main actors in the film have been posting videos for months about the
film. For months even before they started to shoot the film, the pair were
posting videos of them in the gym preparing for the roles and then they
posted the trailers and sneak peaks of the film. This would be very useful
as a huge audience get to see and gain interest for the film for very little
money.
This could also be done on other popular social media sites such as
Facebook and twitter; however, these platforms are not used as much by
our target audience.

Youtube would also be a huge platform in which we could promote our film
to our audience; however, this will cost a lot more money. Youtubers can
monetise their videos, which means they can play a short ad or a trailer
before their content in order to generate money. Companies must pay for
the privilege to have their ad played, but in return can decide what videos
their ad will be shown on. This means that we could target particular
channels. These could include; film review channels, blog channels of young
adults and other channels which research shows people within the age of
15-30 watch. This is a good way to reach a large audience which is targeted
to people who we think would watch our film. In any case this would create
a tremendous amount of publicity but would be very expensive.
As this would be a partially British film, we would definitely do a lot of
advertising in the UK. This could be done perfectly by advertising on
transportation within the UK. Here in the UK we have one of the
worlds biggest public transport bases, with many people taking
busses, trains and coached daily. This opens the opportunity to
advertise our film to masses of people in a very short amount of time.
The problem with this however is that the audience being targeted is
everyone, rather than a specific group which we can target. This is
also an example of passive advertisement as people can walk straight
past these advertisements without taking them in. This method is
also very costly, which leads me to believe it is not the best option for
our film.

 What

have you learnt

about technologies from
the process of
constructing this product?

The first technology used to create my film opening must be the camera. As I had used this in my
GCSE Media Studies coursework, I was quite familiar with this piece of equipment. However, we
used a lot more of the features on the camera this time around as we had to ensure the shots
looked perfect and that we were using the camera to the best of its abilities. We did things such as
balance the hue and saturation to ensure the shot looked right and ensured the colours were
balanced. We did come across some problems with the camera which led us to have to learn about
it even more, looking at an online manual. This problem was concerning the focus which I feel me
and my group are very good at controlling now due to having to learn more about this particular
feature.
The camera we used was a Canon Legria HF200. This is a midlevel camcorder camera, which films
in 720p. This was the format of video which we used in the final cut of the film as it was very good
quality without having to be a huge file size. I feel very confident using this camera now
Which is something I believe is definitely going to help me next year
In my A2 media studies. I will then be somewhat of an expert with this
Camera, as will the rest of my group.

Finally the piece of technology which I have improved the most by using this year is Final Cut
Express which is the programme we used to create the film opening on the schools Mac
computers. This equipment is a lot more advanced than the software we used last year to
create our film trailers at GCSE; the software we used last year was called iMovie and was a
very basic and simple to use programme. I am very happy that I have learnt to use this new
software as it has definitely added a huge amount of quality to our film opening as the software
is a lot more complicated but also makes the final product look much better.
We had used Final Cut Express to edit our preliminary
piece but we did not use much of the software as we
didnt need to add any effects or text
onto this piece. I did however, feel like using this software
to edit the preliminary clip was beneficial
as it ensured I had the basics pinned down before I
started editing. By the end of editing our final piece,
I feel as if I am quite knowledgeable about this piece
of software and look forward to becoming even better
in the future as I progress into A2 Media Studies.

BY CALLUM OHARA