Dolls Domain evaluation By Fern Disney

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

• We develop forms of real media products by having scary women in our media text about child-like things for example dolls and playing with dollhouses and toys. This develops real media products because from our research of films such as Annabelle, dead silence and the women in black, the main character (protagonist) is male and the evil character (antagonist) is female. As this is also present in our media text it suggests we help develop this stereotypical view of childlike factors being creepy and/or scary .

G.E.A.R.S… Gender, ethnicity, Age• When forming our ideas, it was very important to keep in mind a

variety of different groups. • G.E.A.R.S helped us follow a guideline. For example, the gender we

chose was unisex, due to horror not being exclusive to one gender, it would be very hard to specify a horror media product which was on,y for say girls. However from on perspective, someone may say that our product it actually for the female gender due to the use of dolls- stereotypically playing by young girls. Although we as a group wouldn't specify a certain gender

• Much like gender, the ethnicity is purely varied. Any one who is a fan of horror movies would be able to watch this.

• For age, as seen on our BBFC the guided age was 15+ this is because younger ages may find it distressing as it is a horror, we also used child toys which may psychology harm younger viewers.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

• Through the use of a teenage as our main featured character in this media product. The main age for viewing would be around teenagers. However due to this being a horror film it would be appropriate for only teenagers aged 15 and up. Also those aged older who are fans of these types of horrors would also be suitable for our media product.

G.E.A.R.S religion/nationality • As we didn't include any religion or nationality reference with in our

product, it shows we didn't want to specify any given group. • If we wanted to, we could have taken aspects of films such as The

Conjuring to include a given religion. For in example in this film they specify on the Christianity religion. By trying to get rid of the ' evil' within the wife/ mother by saying prays and reading out of the Bible.

• However, even though it is not clear, we did actually use a quiet pray. As part of our build of sound, we used one of our group to whisper and one part we recorded a pray.

G.E.A.R.S Socio-economic There isn't a particular class for our genre, we intend to create our production for those who are fans of horror, not based on their class. Although I do believe it is mainly E-C1- those above may choose to watch it. However it is best suited for these social groups because our main character of our product is a 16/17 (our age) which puts her in class E class in the first place because we don't earn enough money to live off, we are students. Therefore it is likely that people in social grade E could easily identify with our film, increasing the chances of the lower social grades watching it.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

• Through the use of our antagonist, I would say our media product represents the social group of the mainstream, going from the social grade of E (those of lowest level) to about social grade C1 (the lower middle class).

Young and Rubicam's 4Cs model

Young and Rubicam's 4Cs model For our media product, I think it is most suited to the 'mainstream' cultural consumer. This is because our production is a horror film which suits the characteristics of people who live in the world of the domestic and everyday. A daily routine is fundamental to the way they live their lives- supernatural horrors have become more popular therefore with this growing popularity the mainstream audiences may follow the crowd- creating a snowball effect- picking up new viewers for our media product, for example those who discover insidious, may then venture into films such as the conjuring or sinister or Annabelle.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?• I think the media institute which would distribute our

media product is BBC films. This is because films they have already distributed before hand are ones such as Woman In Black. The reason I believe this goes with our film is because The Woman In Black film opens in a similar way to ours, with the child innocence manipulated to be creepy.

How did you attract/ address your audience?• Before we began to film I wrote up a variety of different questions to ask our focus group (this is a video in which I have uploaded to YouTube linked in my blog) to find out how they would feel about our media product and give their thoughts of variety of different horror based questions, for example, whether our focus group (all aged between 16-17) preferred jumpy horror films or psychological. Therefore our answers gathered were addressed in the creating of our media product. A way in which we address our product was by playing the tune lots in class. May people began humming it and were further intrigued to what we were actually creating. Therefore we attracted our audience by releasing small teasers to make them want to watch it.

• Another way in which we attracted our audience was by making a Twitter an Instagram account.

• With Instagram having over 300 million users, it meant we were able to follow as many similar account and post 'teasers' to form more publicity.

• Twitter has 310 million monthly users. Twitter can used for a variety of things. This has meant we have been able to follow all the different account to do with production of different media products.

How did you attract/ address your audience?

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?• In a small section of our media product we printed our a variety of different images and physically edited them, then filming them in the Forrest. However in our final product, we only ended up using 1 of the frames because they other ones ruined the atmosphere built up. This shows what I have learnt about the technologies of photoshop, I had to upload the image, changing the size and then further printing it. I was also the editor of the whole product therefore I learnt about premier.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

• Comparing my editing with the preliminary task and the primary task of Dolls Domain, there is a massive jump of progression which I can personally see. For example I learnt different techniques to manipulate my frames, for example learning how to use a vignette around them. I also learnt how to add something called 'noise' as a type of filter to make it looks like an old media piece. Additionally, I learnt how to put in key frames, this enabled me to change factors of my work, such as slowly zooming in or changing the volume mid clip. A another factor I learnt how to do is to make written text roll upwards on the screen.

Horror time lineOne of the task I done was a horror timeline, this was key in the preparing for the media product. This is because it shows how our work resembles 2010- and later films in comparison to the first ever horror films of Frankenstein. Films created in 2010 was insidious and then Annabelle was made in 2014 which also resembles our media product.

Overall…• Overall looking at the final cut of Dolls Domain, I am rather proud of it, I believe it creates and forms the idea which I originally planned for it, the theme of the creepy human clockwork doll works in creating that creepy tension, people are further intrigued and want to watch the rest- for this I would say it is a success. However, the thing I would change for this media product is at the end I put a rolling set of credits to show my progression, although I do not think it works very well and don't really like it, I think due to the credits already being present in the media on the chalkboard, it isn't really that necessary to be there, except it is a good example of my progression.