Feedback

We got alot of feedback from our final media production we showed it to 10 people and they gave overall responses such as:
'Good short fast opening'
'fast-paced'
'very exciting'
There was also comments on what worked well in our production and what could be improved these included:
'I like the white screen'
'the first person view was very effective'
They also commented on what could be done next time to improve the opening thriller and some suggestions were:
'keep the font the same'
'longer takes between clips'
'to fast and disorientating'
i took all these into account and next time i wopudl try to focus on some of these areas in order to perfect my production and the feel of my thriller.

Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? My media production not only uses normal thriller and media conventions but also adds new dimensions and ideas to a thriller and media production. An idea that we had in a thriller was that weather we would reveal the scary character within the first two minutes and we decided against it as it would take the thrill and edge of seat experience if the evil, bad character was known. We however did decide that we would shoot within the eyes of the evil character through shots looking on at the victim instead as his eyes. The nature of our thriller was fast action and paced as it was a chase scene through the woods and therefore we decided on fast short snappy clips which added to the effect of a ‘race for life’. There is also confusion within my thriller as it jumps in clips from clip to show the fast paced struggle to escape from something. The shots of the feet is another convention that we wanted to look into as all the thrillers that we had analysed and therefore looked to add this and therefore add another convention and dimension to our thriller that separated it from other The set of my thriller production has not developed any forms or conventions as it is already a set thriller style background as the woods add emphasise and isolation among the trees. The trees also add darkness and mystery as there is an unknown aura around the hiding places and what is hiding among the shrubbery and trees. The original idea for a woodland background was through my analysis of ‘Book of Eli’. As I liked the idea of the woodland showing decay, death and hidden dangers. Cuts between scenes added new dimensions as it hasn’t been used as an editing technique before only to add emphasise on the hurry, rushed, panic stricken society. The use of a black and white fuzzed screen was not in any thriller movies that I had analysed before however I decided to add it as I felt that it gave my thriller production suspense with no real understanding into the reasons behind the black and white fuzzed screens and the overall storyline. How does your media product represent particular social groups? My media production our media project doesn’t really represent your average social groupings because there is no social scenes where social status and groups is explored. It is also limited to not representing any social groups as it involves one character. However the genre and style of the thriller could have more appeal to certain social group not through the character interaction but through the storyline, tempo and style it was shot. We had originally planned to aim our production after the questionnaire of ages 15 to 30 male as it was this category that mainly liked the genre. Later on in the film the social areas of the characters may be explored further and therefore stereotype our genre with a representation of a social group. With the opening scene there is a single male 17 years old and from this running the assumption of naughty and troublesome behaviour could be drawn as a social group and characteristics. Also the time limit of the outline was two minutes and therefore it would be hard to set a representation of a certain social group within the two minutes of the opening. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? A media institution that might have distributed my production could have been many different but I think that ‘Optimum Releasing’, could have distributed our production. On the basis that our production is not only a low budget film but it is also a possible typical British production in that it is on a low budget with the aim of making profit by spending little but hoping on the quality of the storyline which ours sets up a unknown confused aura. However on the other hand I think that possibly ‘Fox searchlight pictures’ as it has had a history of regular thrillers passed through there company. Also my production sets new dimensions and also blends the classic stereotypical thriller conventions mixed with new edgy ideas that entice the viewer in the first two minutes. A distributer such as ‘Optimum Releasing’ would also focus on the quality of the storyline and less on the extravagance of the production and the wow factor, this type of production would be reared more towards ‘Fox searchlight pictures’. Our production would have to be distributed by a multinational company as the British film distribution wouldn’t have stake in countries that would provide profit which a global Hollywood company would bring to my production.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for our project would be 15-35 year olds from either sex; however the fast tempo seemingly action packed style might appeal more to a male audience. It would also suit a regular thriller watcher as it would provide them with a new style of thriller but still in keeping with traditional thriller conventions that this group of audience would need to continue watching. My thriller production is also appropriate for a viewer that likes to get into the action straight away instead of waiting for a slow build up and a final dramatic climax my production starts of fast paced but also builds up to the fast paced tempo within the first two minutes. However a thriller convention of a dramatic climax would still exist. We did understand that the opening two minutes would not easily allow us to set the exact audience range that were aiming for however we have managed to set the scene so that the viewer would be able to decide if it there type of film and therefore if they were the target audience. I also decided that by keeping the opening not too lenient towards a set target audience it would appeal to a wider variety of audience and therefore increase profit.

How did you attract/address your audience?

We tried to attract our audience by not showing too much and kept it very short, sharp and snappy to try and keep the audience guessing these also introduced enigmas which would be explored throughout the rest of the film. One of our first enigmas was the name of our production as we didn’t want entitle our production on the first two minutes of the film so with a different title it meant that the audience would be waiting and in suspense for the reasoning behind the title.

We also opened it with a heartbeat and some titles with images of a dead person which were meant to attract the audience straight away. . Rather than starting slowly, we tried to start it fast paced to get people in to the action straight away. .We also used different shots to try and attract the audience for instance we used first person shot as well as some different shots in the same scene to make it snappier.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Adobe premiere pro is easy to use but has quite a few flaws including it is sometimes hard to understand and use it is also hard to grasp at first until you understand the layout and what is happening then it becomes an extremely useful and efficient tool. The cameras we borrowed from college were easy to set up and useful for different shot including not only using the tripods but also for handheld shots such as the chase scene through the woods. Another technique that was useful for sounds effects was a website in which we downloaded various sound effects including a heartbeat various times throughout the production. We also edited the heartbeat so that it was slowed down and therefore fit with the on screen image we also built up the sound so that the end would be louder and therefore giver the effect of a dramatic climax

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

Upon finishing my preliminary task and main task I now feel that I have progressed in different areas. Areas such as editing and planning have improved in that I am able to edit confidently and effectively. This allows me to speed up the editing stage and use a wider variety of editing techniques which improved the overall quality of my thriller production. However I did improve in my ability to use the editing software I also had to leave enough time to edit it properly and therefore increase the quality and overall look to be more professional. Another thing that we had to adapt from our preliminary task was the overall timekeeping as it was not as accurate as we firstly believed and therefore had to adapt various deadlines so that we could achieve the product we wanted. We did along the way miss some deadlines due to lack of timekeeping however once we had understood our planning we were able to produce our production with relative ease. A problem of timekeeping was us not filming early enough and therefore limiting our time for editing and reshooting any inadequate parts. This overall technique helps us in the editing stage as we could see what needed to reshoot and re edit.

Final Edit

This is my final edit which we planned, shot and edited all ourselves. I am overall happy with my procduction however there are areas and parts that i would reshoot and re-edit to enhance the quality and get the exact filming i was happy with. watching it back i notice that some problems that were arised have been dealt with however there are also areas which still need to be adressed.
i was happy with my final production as the quality and overall feel of the production is what i was aiming at.

Self evaluation

I conducted my own mini evaluation to see what went well and what went wrong and want went well:

What went wrong:

I felt that we never managed to stick to our orginal planning at all due to a lack of avaibility in sets which we wanted when we wanted to shoot. this left us with the problem and we had to adapt our production completly so we could finish it with sufficient footage. After watching and assesing everything i decided that we should have moments where the footage stops completly so it gave the effect of hand held camera that was going through damage with the chase.

What worked well:

I felt that everything involved with our production went well and i was happy with the outcome apart from the problems faced and still to be adressed. this mini evalution gave me the chance to personally critcise my thriller instead of the group criticisim i could see what i felt worked well and could raise it with the group and therfore give us a more professional production.

Editing

This stage waqs the most demanding and required contant attention we spaced the editing out evenly both among the group and also across some days. The program we used was Adobe premeire pro and it was overall very effective and easy to use:

Day 1:
this involved the setting up of everythign and importing the relivant clips needed we basically went over every clip naming and deleting any unuseablke footage or clips that were messed up. This day set up the ease of the rest of the other editing sessions as it allowed us to have all the footage on Adobe premeire pro.
Day 2:
This day involved us from starting to get the clips we wanted to use and edit them into the sequence in order this involved us finding the order of the clips and what we wnated to go in varioius areas. we managed to get the entire timeline full ain the order and left the next to involve the editing techniques and technology behind what we wanted to do.
Day 3:
We edited our entire production together this involved the white fuzzed screen, jump cuts and blank areas which added the to the rushed nature of my thriller production. We also edited the titles in the stage and it mean that we had to add new images by the end of the day we had our complete thriller prodeuction finished and allowed us to crtitcise it and make imporvments so that we were enitrely happy with the outcome.

This is the title which was a white fuzzed screen behind an additional title title throug adobe.

This is the white fuzzed screen that we edited through the use of a green screen and chroma key on adobe.

Shooting

The aim of a filming day was to entirely finish our filming in order to keep continuity qwith weather, actors and general atmosphere of the production. we wanted to film enough material so that the editing stage would be easier with a mix of material so editing could be easier with more shots to chose from in order to enhance thew quality if we didnt like a certain shot.
First scene:
We started with filming of the first person views of the feet and the fall in the climax at the end. we chose to shot this first as it only involved one person from our team and therefore free up the other members to set up later shoots. the main idea in this part of the film was to get the effect of panic race againist death feeling and to also pu tthe audience into the view of the production and making them feel involved and feel the same emotions as the chrecters.
Second scene:
This shoot involved the high angle shot of me (the unamed charecter) running through the wood. This shot was in eyes of the stalker watching over the actions of the charecter and following him. we wanted this shot as it gave an opening background establishing shot and also gave the emphasis on the woods and the dnager hidden within.
Thrid scene:
The shot was again in the eyes of the stalker however this was on the ground at the same level and this was shot through a bush in order to give the audience the feel of danger lurking around in the woods it also set up this chrecter overlooking (the unamed charecter) as being stalked and victimised by someone or something.
Fourth scene:
This was the final scene and it involved the unamed charecter being actually chased by the stalker and involved both charecters in a pursuit for life and death. This shot was again through the eyes of the pursuer and showed the panic of the victim trying to escape from his fate that is not revealed in the opening scene.

Filming positions

Before we were filming our production we wanted to look at the possible positions and angles for the camera to be set up in order to achieve that shot we wanted. we needed a high angle shot to use during a running scene in the woods so that it gave us a wider shot. the position chosen for our high angle shots was up a small tree which was supported and safe for the camera and the group member. This was the tree used for thew high angle shot, chosen for its saftey, accessability and view from the shot we wanted:

During the wood scene there is also a stalking position from within a bush which we originally planned to have shot from a army camoflauge net but we decided to use the real bush as it added more of an effect that the net couldn't achieve. here is a picture of the location within the bush chosen for its safety, accessibility and view of the shot we wanted: