Thursday, 14th Jan 2010, Media Lesson

Today in A-Level Media Studies, we were told about our coursework for the course. We had to get into groups of four and at the end of the process, produce a two minute film opening. We decided our group would be me, Sophie, Charlotte and Ellie, because we are close friends which means it will be easier to access each other out of school time, work together and be comfortable in the group :).We were given a booklet, containing deadlines and work to complete towards our final product. Our first task (FOR TOMORROW!!..tight deadlines!) was to produce a mind map of all the things we knew about the genre of film opening we were going to attempt to make… but first we had to decide on a genre! It didn’t take us long to realise that horror/thriller was the genre that most appealed to us all and the genre that we all felt we could be the most creative with. We then went and gate crashed a year 11 media class in room 29 (the room the nicked off us) to get some flip chart paper and pens! They weren’t very impressed ;)!
After getting the equipment we made a brain-storm of all the relevant and crucial information we all knew on the horror and thriller genre, dividing the page into such subcategorize as, settings, stock characters, props, connotations, listing all the horrors we know and appealed to us etc. We filled the whole page as between us we must have seen a million horror films! After that we filled in a sheet about questionnaires, which was research into the type of data available to get from questionnaires, such as quantitative data and qualitative date. After that we decided to start drafting the questions we were going to put in our questionnaire to get the relevant information we needed and to discover who are target demographic was. We put in basic information like gender, age, occupation etc. and also questions about horror films such as; if they enjoyed them, what subcategory of horror appeals to them most, why they enjoyed horror films, if they prefer the film if the can relate to the characters more etc. A target demographic is important because it will allow us to cater to our audiences and produce the best possible opening we can, using the right sort of camera shots, costume, characters, lighting, props and storyline.
After we completed the draft questions, we wrote them out on the computer, ready for Mr. Cramb to look at them tomorrow! Hopefully tomorrow we will find out whether our questionnaire is worthy enough to be distributed!!! We were also deciding as to which films we will try and do our FIVE textual analysis’s by, by the 28th of Jan! eeek! Hard work! We’ll see what happens tomorrow :) ….