1. Preliminary task 3 CRITICAL REFLECTION
By Blake Novack

2. How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?
My group used the research from the scene Taken mostly. We used medium close ups, low angles, light score, and sound effects just like the taken scene. Our video represents kidnapping and the dangers of teenagers not paying attention to their surroundings while on their phones. This video caters to teenagers and goes to show that when young adults aren’t aware of their surroundings, awful things can happen. None of the videos we researched used the conventions of location and having specific mise en scene techniques. So, we decided to challenge that and used a lot of makeup for our video. We included blood, sweat, and the blindfold to make the audience scared and nervous for the teens well being.

3. How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
Our movie engages with audiences by keeping our viewers on the edge of their seats. The build of suspense throughout the movie will keep the audience wanting more. Our viewers would be mostly teen and young adults. We would put ads on YouTube videos and on TV stations like Freeform and MTV. Posting ads on YouTube will let us cater to our target market because most teens do watch YouTube daily. We would then distribute the actual film in movie theatres for a short period of time to make audiences feel the urge to see it as soon as possible.

4. How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
In the beginning of this project I barely knew anything about filming and acting. When we first started doing research, I got to see what the correct way to do it was. Watching the scenes from horror movies helped me be able to recreate shots and see how our actors should express their emotions. We used iMovie to complete the editing and when I went to complete the final draft, my computer crashed. I had to look through iMovie to look for it but nothing worked. I then had to just settle with the rough draft that was saved to my Word Press. From this, the skills I learned are that I must make sure to save everything on to a flash drive or to my iCloud. Also a skill I need to develop is to not procrastinate until the last minute.

5. How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware, and online – in this project?
My group recorded our project using Laura’s Canon t6i camera. In this camera was a Bluetooth setting which we then transferred the videos to Laura’s phone. Then, we airdropped them to my iMac Pro. From the downloads screen, I dragged and dropped the video clips into my iMovie, which I had already downloaded from the last Preliminary Task. iMovie is what my group was most comfortable with due to prior experience. For sound effects, all but one were already on the iMovie software. The one sound effect that was not on the software was the gunshot, which I found on a basic sound effect website and downloaded it to my iMac. When we were done editing the video, we uploaded it to the internet on YouTube where our peers and Mr. Callovi could access it easily.