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

After looking back over our preliminary task and then comparing it to our finished thriller opening, we noticed that we had made many mistakes and that our filming is now of a better quality compared to our preliminary task.

 Looking back at our storyboard that we have created, we have followed all of the initial shots that we wanted to do. But when coming to actually filming some of the shots there were things obstructing and making it harder for us to do it how we initially wanted for example, we couldn't film the opening scene to our thriller as we were very limited in the places that we could use a knife as we can't carry knifes around in public areas. Also getting to our initial shoot location was challenging as it was only accessible by car and getting transport to take us there was near impossible.
So as a result of this we had to change and adjust the shots so that it would look as good as we could make them look.

Sound was also a problem for us as the camera had very bad audio quality after listening over our preliminary task so we had to remove the sound as the quality was so distorted. So this left us to make the sound through things such as garage band which took us more time than expected. It was a challenge for us to make some music as none of our group has knowledge in music and how to construct music on garage band.

Another thing that we could see from looking back over our preliminary task we could see that the quality of our filming needed improving as we could see from the footage that the shots weren't that smooth. We had to practice shots to make things such as zooming in and out look much smoother to give us the effect that we wanted. To make sure that our shots were perfect we filmed them time and time again until we feel that we got a shot that was to the standard in which we wanted.

When completing our thriller opening and comparing it back to our preliminary task i feel we have learnt a lot from the progression of developing our thriller opening, we have made our edits look smoother with less sharp cuts, leading the next shot in smoothly and we have learned a lot more different editing techniques to make our shots look how we want them to. Not only our editing has got better i believe our group have also got better in filming as you can see from our preliminary task the shooting was very rough and at stages very shaky compared to our finish thriller opening.

By George.

Question Six: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of costructing this product?

To film both our movie and our preliminary task we used a Panasonic HSD60 camcorder. Recording was a new thing to all of our group as we have never had to film anything with a real camcorder.
The zoom feature helped us in creating shots such as our close ups. This helped us save time and helped us improve the quality of our film.



We also used additional equipment such as the tripod, we used this as it made it much easier to steady the camera so it made the shots look less amateur and so that nothing distracts the audience. It also made it easier for us to adjust the height of the camera and do panning shot.

 

 

We also used a variety of equipment/technology to edit and produce

our movie from the raw footage we have used some of the things that

we have used include, garage band, IMovie and the apple mac's.

Using the apple mac's made it easy to put the movie together in

IMovie as we could easily cut and place other shots into place that

we had to go back and re-shoot. With IMovie, we could use some

very simple edits to make the shots look better quality .

 We also used a variety of equipment/technology to edit and produce our movie from the raw footage we have used some of the things that we have used include, garage band, IMovie and the apple mac's. Using the apple mac's made it easy to put the movie together in IMovie as we could easily cut and place other shots into place that we had to go back and re-shoot. With IMovie, we could use some very simple edits to enhance the look of the shots.

 

Using Garage band, to create our background music, was a challenge as there were a limited amount of sounds to choose from. But putting the sounds together and bind them took a while as it was hard go get the sound how we wanted it.

 

By George

Question Five: How did you attract/address your audience?

There are many ways in which we attracted our audience (15+) such as the location which was a school building which means that teenagers can relate to our movie as they are most likely still at school.

 we addressed our audience by asking our main target audience various questions about thrillers and what it is that intrigues them to watch the rest of th film because of an opening scene giving us a good idea of what we needed to include to keep the audience interested.

 

We found out that our audience is mostly intrigued and kept engaged by the building of tension therefore we followed our main character (who is a similar age to our target audience) as he walked through a school building, putting the viewer on edge and leaving them wondering what is going to happen next.

Question Four: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Age rating
 

The aim for our media product would be people from the age 15 and up as it's a thriller. The reason for this is because it contains strong violence and gory images.

We have collected data on which gender our thriller will be aimed at both audience's although we did ask more woman than men. Our Movie isn't aimed at any particular sex.

We have also collected information on what people are most likely to go and watch thriller movies as you can see from our results 15-20 year olds are most likely to go to the cinema and watch our genre of movie. So this is another reason why we aimed our thriller at this specific age group.

Question Three: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Distribution

Distribution

 

 

Our media product would be distributed by institutions such as 20th century fox, one example of a movie they have produced is taken 2. We think this would be a good distributer as it's a big conglomerate company that is known world wide and have lots of expertise in the film industries.  We feel that it would get our movie known as it will be distributed to more institutions.

If we did have our movie distributed by someone such as 20th century our movie would have high expectations as they are a big company

 

 

We also believe that our movie could be distributed by a smaller institutions such as IFC films they have released films such as Fish Tank. We believe that this would be a good distributer for our movie as it distributes small independent films and documentaries. They use distribute movies with unknown or little known cast. The use of our own props and school equipment tells us that we were on a small budget. IFC would be good as they are a company that help movies grow and get there movies more well known rather than trying to achieve a big revenue, movie distributers such as 20th century fox and universal are wanting to make more of a profit.

 

 

Question Two: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product reinforces the stereotype of male teenagers as troublesome and troubled.
We use a black hoodie which the media represent as a favourable item of clothing for hooligans and criminals as they would use the hood to hide their identity. As this is such a big stereotype especially for Britain, we decided to use it to signify an unsympathetic lead character who we suggest is "hiding something" and is also uncomfortable in his surroundings.

Although we have challenged racial stereotypes as there are no black people in our thriller opening (the media represent black teenagers as violent criminals and thugs who are associated with gangs), we have reinforced the media stereotype for school orientated mass murderers (such as in the Columbine massacre) as Caucasian males by casting a white male in the lead role. For example "We Need to Talk About Kevin." We have also limited our representation because all our characters are white. we could change this in our next Media Construct.

In the shot below (a close up of our character's eyes) we try to convey in the mise en scene that his smiling eyes (connoting happiness and excitement) show he has selected a victim. We create sympathy for the victim as she is unaware and the stereotype is complete as the main character has no mercy or sympathy. He is just evil. We use the stereotype to create anxiety in the viewer, which we then would play on later in the story. We would then make the reader feel sympathy for the character by making him more rounded and less of a stereotype.

Question One: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and coventions of real media products?

Overall, our film opening follows the conventions found in most thriller genre films. This helps our audience identify the exact genre that the film is going to be through the first 2 minutes. We drew inspiration from a range of films, but we mainly took a lot from the Eminem Music Video/Short Film - 3AM. This music video showed a varied amount of thriller codes and conventions which helped us come up with the whole idea for our film.

Used	Un-used
we used a lot of shots that didn't reveal certain things, using shadows and camera angles. for example we did not allow the audience to see the protagonists face for suspense.	we failed to use reflections and mirrors which we had originally wanted to use for more dramatic moments like the death scene.
we used a lot of darkness to keep the film quite dark in its personality.	we failed to use a wide range of thriller-type camera angles and shots which may have made the film opening a lot more diverse.
in our thriller opening we decided to use a knife as our killers weapon. we chose to use this because it is a brutal and primitive weapon so it would make our hooded figure seem more animalistic.	we did not use blood. blood is a huge factor in conventional thrillers, we showed a few dead bodies but we didn't go into much detail with gore.
youth. we decided to theme our film around Youth culture. so we gave our protagonist a black hoodie. this widens our audience because it also includes younger people to watch our film. the hood also represents darkness, the colour and the fact that it creates anonymity for the murderer.	we wanted to use a spotlight/street light to shadow over the protagonist while he watches his victim.

my conclusion to the question in hand is that our film follows a lot of thriller-genre codes and conventions to help the audiences recognise the style and genre of the film, identification is the main factor in film making, along side connectivity. the way that the audience feels when they watch the film, this is why we didn't use some of our ideas that we had for our film opening.

by Elliott Clarke