2. Critical Reflection on Fresh Product By Max Brown

3. How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues? The movie that my group and I made, Fresh Product, was different, yet similar, to other horror/thriller movies. We used elements that are in a stereotypical horror movie, like darkness, blood and music. But, our storyline was sort-of unconventional. Our movie is based on a cannibalistic chef who is going around and killing people within his neighborhood. He uses his victims as food for himself and the family he cooks for. Personally, I’ve never seen a movie that follows a cannibal, let alone a murderous, cannibalistic chef. We also went against the norm in our scene when we had the chef kill his victim by means of an automobile accident. It was not shown, but rather a news broadcast from YouTube was used. Our film represents outcasts in society, like cannibals. Although a minority, cannibals all over the world struggle with everyday life, like how they’ll get food to eat (humans).The chef is a cannibal and he is depicted as a killing machine, when in reality, he is only trying to get the food he most desires. Our film also touches base with the ethical dilemma of being a cannibal.

4. How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text? The scene we created from Fresh Product should strike fear within audiences. Through the use of shots, camera angles, etc… we were able to convey a scary and mysterious feeling. The face of the chef is never clearly shown, which doesn’t exactly interact with audiences, but it entices them to want to know what the killer looks like. We also transform a serial killer to a somewhat normal chef, developing our character in the little time we had. For me, this movie would do best being distributed through theaters, aimed at thrill seekers. After theaters, the likes of Netflix and other streaming sites would be used to further gain profit. I would stay away from DVDs because I see them as almost outdated with streaming services like Netflix being so popular.

5. How did your production skills develop throughout this project? From the development of the plot to the final editing moments, I think that my production skills have grown substantially. I had previously only ever shot videos through a phone. Learning to use a camera and a tripod was quite the experience and aided in developing my production skills. The most beneficial part of the entire project for my skills was the peer review of the rough draft. The peer review informed us of massive continuity errors within our scene, and gave us new ideas for our final draft. One major point from the peer review was that our scene was shot in the daytime, and they (our peers) felt that our scene would be better if it was shot at night. Overall, the project taught me to always look over work and to try and improve it, even if it looks perfect.

6. How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project? Our group filmed the scene using a camera and tripod given to us by Mr. Callovi. We used the YouTube app on a Samsung T.V. to play a news broadcast of a car accident at the beginning of the scene. We edited our film on the video editing program Adobe Premier on the computers in the back room f Mr. Callovi’s room and iMovie at our houses. I used a Mac to write the blogs at home and a cellphone to write them during class.