In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of a real media products? When we first started looking at making a 2 minute opening of a thriller, we started by looking at other real established media products and looking at the different elements, conventions that they put into them and establishing how they work to produce fear in to the audience to make a successful thriller. From here we established the conventions and came up with our own that we can use. After we established the conventions we decided to use these as they have been proven effective in the vast amount of thrillers. Also we chose to stick to the “norms” of a thriller as the examiner could easily mark and grade us of the composition of the film its self.
From our research in to thriller, we established that the location has to be realistic in order for the audience to think that the situation is real. As well as this believable characters that act naturally, in conjunction with the use of enigmas, so that it would be recognised as a thriller. The opening was set in a garage in which we use close-ups shots and point of view shots, and quick transaction between scenes to comply to the generic conventions of thrillers. By doing this we get different shots of the character and we can see close up of his emotions and how we his feeling. From the shots that we used we created the visual that the audience is looking at the antagonist from the protagonist view. As well as point of view shots we used high angle to create the allusion that one character is inferior to the other. We also used low angles to give one character a sense of power.
Also we used the enigma of what did the character do to get in this position that he is in the moment. By doing this we create a whole background to the characters and keeps the audience are we going to find out about the history of them and how the story of these characters is going to progress. During the film we had some dialog that revealed how the character go to the position, so in order to keep the enigma we removed this from the finial product. Our opening can be compared to such films as the interrogation scene from reservoir dogs. In which they use the same conventions that we tried to use in our production also the point of view shots, which we used, is also used.
2. How does you media product represent particular social groups? In our thriller our opening scene the social groups are shown extremely clearly. At the start of the piece we see a middle class man walking in to a garage. This man is wearing a suite which show he has a high status job, as well as having the middle class status the suite also creates a dominative and very much in the stereotype of an alpha male in the scene. The other man in the opening from what he is wearing shows a working class individual in which has a low pay role. From the clothes he is wearing the audience can depict a picture of the sort of lifestyle that the character in question lives. The man in the chair is shown as submissive, as he begs to the man in control. Their ages are represented through their clothing and the way they act, the setting as well also suggest that they’re adults as the character has a house with a large garage. The stereotypes are typical as the middle class man are shown as dominative and the working class as passive which helps people to relate to it as the stereotypical view people have of social groups.
The character that is integrating also conflict with the normal stereotype of middle class is usually calm and collected. As well see the character beat on the other suggest that it goes against the stereotype. beat on the other suggest that it goes against the stereotype.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? The kind of media institutions that might distribute our product are likely to be the same as those that have distributed films similar to ours in terms of genre and conventions, such films are What Lies Beneath, The Sixth Sense, and reservoir dogs. I researched some of them to find the institutions that are likely to show interest in such genre. I think our media production would work as an 20th century fox film, the reasons for this are that the style that we use which stuck to the original generic conventions of the thriller genre and as such would have a unique look and feel that may find mass appeal. 20th century fox would like be the best suitor to distribute this media product because they have done similar product such as taken (in which I done a textual analysis on) I think the film its self has the potential to become a franchise as it has a storyline in which can be expanded in a number of areas and could use vertical integration to expand in to different areas of the market like SAW has done(the ride at Thorpe park)
The visual style of the opening can also be addressed better if this was to be released as an 20thcentry fox production as it could go for a high budget production go for quirks in how its executed that would also help in building it up as its own and also bring large audience.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product? From our target audience research we established that audience that is over the age of 15 as there are scenes of violence that would not be appropriate for the younger audience fits our media product for viewing. Also we established that in terms of gender it would appeal to males more than females, as females are known to be more romantic half and our two-minute sequence doesn’t have any romantic element of any nature. But as this was assumed out of stereotypical views and does not necessarily apply for every female. Even more general, our product is suitable for audiences that have a high level of suspense, uncertainty and a fast past chase scenes. I looked at previous films for example kill bill, which is classed as 18, and saw, which is a 15. A lot of thrillers make their films 15+ as to increase ticket sales, as they want to target a younger audience.
I had referred to the BBFC age classification to make a decision on what rating this film should be. This helped me compare to their films that are similar to mine and base it upon that.
5. How did you attract/address your audience? To attract the audience I gathered up all my ideas from personal knowledge of films, one of the biggest influences was saw as they have made a massive franchise on there products and have even gone as far to having ride at Thorpe park because of the defining characters. I thought about all the action thrillers that I knew and how well they were produced to make that film become as successful as it has. The use of music helped attract my audience as it set the pace of the film to which can attract an audience very quickly. The non-digetic music that we used was taken from sound track pro. To make the prop’s see authentic we used a gunshot and a bone breaking sound to enhance the hitting on the leg. Because of this it helps enhance the realism of the opening and its authenticity. Also I think my use of shots attracted people as well because its up to the appearance of the film to gain opinion on the film. We used a lot of close-ups, middle ranged shots and point of view shots, to show what is going on with the characters and there emotions, and how the character is reaction and get the full effect of how the character is feeling.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product? When we first started the course work we learnt how to sign up to blogger and we explored with that, in changing the templates, backgrounds to suite the theme of our thriller. When we started to brain storm our ideas we used a webbed base program called bubble.us, in which we created a brainstorm.
Then once we first started using the equipment to create our preliminary we didn’t have any filming experience previously but we had access to good quality equipment so filming our prelimany was not to difficult. We had to stick to two rules which were, the 180 degree rule, match on action; we established these rules from the use of you tube.
When we established the rules we then got out the equipment, which included tripod, camera, and a shotgun microphone. When we started to film we was told to count to 5 then say action to the actor to have the space for editing, and we done this with the shots that we had to work out to get the best angles for out opening. We didn’t use no extra/ special equipment for the film of the film as it was necessary. The editing software that we used was called finial cut pro, at first we found it very difficult to use but after a couple of times, we got the hang of it. The first step was to import the video from the dock, and break it down in to individual scene. From there we arranged the different scenes on to the time. This proved more difficult in the 2 minute thriller than the preliminary as I had to overlay score music, multiple soundtracks, put in titles slow down and speed up scenes and adjusted he coloring of the scene so that it had a darker and more “thriller like” feel. the music came from sound cut pro in which we used in out final piece.
To upload the finial piece of work we used you tube, as they have the function to embed a video in to blogger in which we recorded al our stuff on.
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
When I look back at the preliminary task I can see that the amount of planning that we done was a lot of difference compare to our two minute thriller. We didn’t have no storyboard or shot list so we didn’t know were to begin, or how to go about filming it. By doing this we learnt the importance of doing these’s thing for our two minute thriller. We also learnt the vitals of the 180-degree rule as in our filming of the preliminary we found It hard to stick to this rule. Learning to use finial cut pro was one of the most important parts, as I had no experience in using this program before learning the basic’s of it helped greatly when it came to the break down of the scenes and putting them on to the time line and putting the scenes in to sequence, making them blend smoothly and shifting around the sound. Putting in background soundtrack and putting credits and text over the video. Taking these skills to the two minute sequence, I can see the progression and complexity of the tasks and I had to do this all again only on a bigger scale also I had to do a lot more leveling out for the film so that it would all work together than having voices that were unheard.
