My Closing Post...

Today when me and Charlotte finished our evaluation it suddenly occurred to us that we are finished! It hit us at how quickly everything seems to have gone. We felt quite sad that it's all come to an end after months and months of preparing, filming and editing. We have learnt an incredible amount about many different aspects to do with media and I think we've done pretty well considering we began in September without a clue about anything really. I literally had no knowledge on how to use imovie or how to use any of the camera equipment. I'm proud to say that we're now more or less experts at it...finally!

I now find myself analysing everything I see on TV, for example noticing continuity mistakes and shaky camera shots, it's quite amusing actually. I have loved every second of media, I seem to have found a real passion for it that I never knew I had. We've had so much fun, I'm sure that next year A2 will be just as great, at least next time round we'll go in already having lots of knowledge about how everything works. Hopefully we can improve our skills further and learn even more around the subject, I guess we'll just have to wait and see!

Here is our Evaluation of our film opening for Special Kate.

7 Evaluation Questions

Here are the questions we will need to prepare for our evaluation:

1. In what ways does your film opening use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

2. How does your film opening represent particular social groups?

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your film opening and why?

4. Who would be the audience for your film opening?

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this film opening?

7. Looking back at your prelim task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the final film opening?

Here is some of the feed back we received at the premier of our film opening. Our audience consisted of a variety of people, both male and female and of all different ages. However many of our friends came along to support us and as we are an all girl school the majority of people were young teenage girls which suited us perfectly as this was our target audience. Everyone else however who came to watch also enjoyed our film opening very much which was a relief.

We had the flip cameras set up in the hall in order for people to leave comments on about our work and what they liked. Here is one of the responses we received.



Here are also some quotations left to us on the feedback sheets that we gave out.

1. Please give details about what you like about our film opening.

"It was really fun and lighthearted.  Very enjoyable."

"Very well acted, made it funnier"

"Really embodied the Chick Flick genre"

"Really cleverly thought out for example the whole idea of Special K"

"Editing was great"

"Very creative shots and camera movements"

"Made me want to watch the whole film"

"Loved the quirky bumble bee at the start, it immediately caught my attention which was maintained throughout"

"Was very funny, totally got the humour"

"The credit fonts suited the genre, loved how they faded in and out"

"Really good use of ellipsis, the lighting and costume all worked very well and the timing of the soundtrack was really effective"

"Loved the camera movement when staggering out of bed"

"It was really amusing, a good choice of music,funky and upbeat, suited the genre well"

2. What is your favourite part of our film opening and why?

"Loved the bus scene, made me laugh"

"When she poured orange juice into her cereal, this was funny"

"I really liked the Benny Hill like running after the bus"

"When Kate looks out of the window and sees her sister is lying there, also at this point when the music stopped the surprise was really funny"

"I liked how Kate looks rough and then after spiting out her tooth paste comes up looking all pretty"

"The bumble bee at the start was really good"

"Loved the reaction to the orange juice"

"Liked the use of fast forward to show time passing by"

"Liked the part when Kate left her sister on the floor, was funny"

"Kate throwing the clock out of the window and knocking out her sister, very entertaining"

"Liked the zooming in and out of the blind for the costume change, very clever"

"Loved the switch from wide shots to close up shots in the bus stop scene"

"The bus stop scene was TOO FUNNY, loved it"

"I liked the alarm clock getting thrown out of the window and how it sets the scene for the humour to come"

"The mad hair!"

"Loved the build up of unpredictability"

"The shots in the fridge, very creative"

"The orange juice bit, added humour which is hard to do"

"Loved the music choice and how the clips all fitted to it, was great"

Overall me and Charlotte are so pleased with the responses we got, everyone seemed to really enjoy our film opening which is a big relief after all our effort. We are really grateful for all the lovely comments, the feedback is really good to hear. I think that my favourite comment was "Made me want to watch the whole film" which has been our goal throughout the whole process as this is what a film opening is meant to do, this comment meant a lot to both me and Charlotte.

I came across this video and I love it. At first I thought it was going to be something silly, but then it got a lot better with the results and it's actually really clever. I think it sums up quite neatly the way that people try to express an identity online and how pictures people have up of themselves, for example on facebook or myspace, can be very decieving.

Video to one side, this is infact a very serious issue and there have been many cases where people have been decieved by pictures leading to devistating consiquences. One recent case involved Peter Chapman, a British convicted murderer who has featured heavily in the media in the United Kingdom. He has become known as the "Facebook killer." He was jailed for a minimum of 35 years in March 2010 and his crime has led to serious criticism of police monitoring and Facebook.

Chapman used a fake Facebook profile, using a display picture of a very goodlooking young male in order to befriend Ashleigh Hall, a 17-year-old college student from Darlington. In reality, he was a 33-year old man living in his car. She met him on the 25 October and according to the prosecution, "When she met him on 25 October last year, he kidnapped, raped and murdered her."

Like the mother says in this video.."You just don't know who's behind that photo"

Yesterday watched the film Paranormal Activity 2 a 2010 American supernatural horror film directed by Tod Williams and written by Michael R. Perry. The film is a parallel prequel to the 2007 film Paranormal Activity, beginning two months before and following up with the events depicted in the original film.


After experiencing what they think are a series of "break-ins", a family sets up security cameras around their home, only to realize that the events unfolding before them are more sinister than they seem.


The people behind PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 clearly learned a lesson from the debacle of BLAIR WITCH 2: BOOK OF SHADOWS; they’ve hewed scrupulously close to the original film in style and tone. The result is probably the best true sequel that could have been made to PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, without avoiding the pitfalls that come with creating a close-but-not-too-close approximation of a singular success. Paranormal Activity 2 follows the "bigger and more" ethos of sequels, while sticking to the ground rules laid down by the first surprise hit of a film. Of course "bigger and more" is a relative term. Here we get a slightly bigger home to be confined in and more people: two parents, a teenage daughter, a maid, an infant and a dog. The latter two make good use of the rather spooky thing that babies and pets do when their attention is fixed on something invisible to others. More cameras too: instead of the one image of the bedroom we get to cycle through six static security cameras (brought in by the family when they return to find their furniture and belongings in disarray, seemingly following a burglary, although nothing was taken). These changes aren't enough to distort or taint the basic premise.


I have to say that this film really did scare me, I spent half my time hidden behind a pillow as the suspense and dramatic tension was just too much to handle. The thing that always makes a film scarier is when it looks like it is real life, the dialogue doesn't sound scripted and because the actors are not famous (have just been in the paranormal films) it just adds to the realism. The jumpiest bit of the film was when all the kitchen cupboard doors and draws suddenly flew open causing a massive unexpected sound of crashing and banging. Everyone in the room with me screamed and carried on screaming!


I think the fact that they used a baby really added to the disturbing nature of the film as the child just seemed too innocent to be surrounded by such awful events. I particularly didn't like the bit when the baby gets dragged out of the bed, I found that really disturbing, but it definitely added to the genre of horror.


It was good horror film which didn't take anything away from the first Paranormal Activity. Apart from being terrified i did actually really enjoy it.

People's idea on 'what is beautiful' really is distorted, and in my opinion it's because of the media, for example in magazines every single woman is perfect, immaculate skin, slim, have perfectly straight noses, and are perfectly made up. It puts a lot of pressure on everyone on how a person is suppose to look and it can effect people in many ways including causing anorexia as girls especially feel they should be thin like all the models they see in news papers, on posters, in magazines and on the Internet. Nothing is real any more nearly everything is edited. Here is a video I found on YouTube which shows the process in which models undergo before their photograph is put out for the public to see.



Here is another video which I know is also very popular on You Tube ...