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.