1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Uses and develop
From seeing the film Halloween we felt as a group that the setting and lay out would be perfect for our thriller. There is many chase scenes in the film Halloween, which we felt really created that effect of keeping the audience on their feet, so we adopted and developed on the ideas that we felt were necessary for are film .By changing our scenes constructively to create the same effect, given off in Halloween. We shot our chase scene under the orange lit street lamps. We felt this was a much needed effect to our film due to the lack of effective props. Some of the shots used in Halloween are very effective really showing the tension from the people being hunted; an example of this is the close up shot of the killer at a young age as taps his sister on the leg with blood on his hand. The great thing about this shot is that it is a point of view shot making you feel as if you are the one looking at him, in a way making you feel the feelings and shock of the sister. This really gets the sister worried and on edge as it’s very abnormal and unexpected. He is also wearing a mask this gives the feeling of no expression of the feelings from the killer as there is no movement in his face, giving the feeling to the audience of this motionless face of stone. Which really creates a Erie feel when looking at his mask covered face. We took on board the vibes that were given off by the unique effect the mask created, of the unknown, by creating a mystery character in our film, which follows the character ‘George’ across the street. We went for the same idea of the unknown which the Halloween had and decided that the character ‘Sam’ would be hooded person, to create mystery and tension.
Conventions
Our thriller opening follows many thriller conventions of typical thriller genre.
The opening of our thriller is the first convention, filming over a wide landscape with no visible forms of life giving the impression of peacefulness and isolation. Basic camera shots that we had adopted from our preliminary task were used here, with the slow movement of the panning shot .The music that we planted in the background gives the impression that change is happening or something maybe expected later. We thought by having an audio effect indicating that change is happening was a better idea than a visual effect as we felt it was too obvious.
The scene changes to the character ‘George’ sitting on a wall smoking, this shows a stressed person. Also you get a feeling that the camera records his every move such as the close up on the cigarette at the end, watching it burn away, giving an angry feel to watch indicating there may be not much time left for ‘George’.
Another convention of the film is the close up shot of ‘George’ when he hears the rattle of the bottle and becomes shocked which is why the speed of his actions get reduced making him feel helpless and exposed, this gives the indication that the person after him is dangerous and may cause harm, this shot indicates that the sub-genre of the film is a horror because of the slow speed and the rusty tinged lighting. This shot was also adopted from the preliminary task, as from the experience of trying this shot we felt that it was the right shot to use to create the tense upsetting atmosphere we needed.
2. The film we created was directed at typical working class people-
The particular social group my film is targeting is the younger more adrenalin population, as our film comes across as very tense and sinister. I feel that I have achieved the eerie feel I went for by all the dark sounds slow motion effects and interesting lighting. Even though our film has only men actors in it we still think that the women would be interested in the happenings of our film such as the chase scene and the tranquil view of the field. We have represented the villain in an interesting way, he is not obviously shown as he could be a good guy because he does not conflict any actions on the victim ‘George’ to prove he was the villain.
The social class that our film targets is the working class as the character George character is based on a normal person living a normal life. George is 18 years old and has a job working in a window company. George is a smoker, he likes a bit too drink but knows when to stop, and on the whole George is a rather sensible character. I don’t see any racial issues with our film, however there is only white British males acting. This could put of other races frothe film as the surrounding area is not as built up, but there still is that feeling of harshnessm watching our production but I feel the content is very interesting which would intise the public to view it.
The region the film is set in is the suburbs of London, giving a soft feel to , from the people around the area. The victim in the film can be seen as a stressful guy who has a busy life. The characteristics of ‘George’ can be seen from his behaviour when he is walking down the road, while hearing a bottle role down the road, the camera shot goes into a slow motion mode giving us an impression on his paranoia and his depth of fright.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The institutions that might distribute my media product would be Dimension Film Productions and Nightfall productions. I chose these two institutions because they both distributed films that were in our selected genre.
I chose dimension films Distribution Company as they have released many thrilling films such as Scream (1996),Scream 2 (1997) and Scream 3 (2000) I chose these particular films as they have man characteristics with our film such as stalking scenes and masked villains. Also I would like Dimension films have distributed thousands of films so by them doing that to my thriller it would increase the amount of profit produced. I decided for nightfall productions as well because of their involvement in the distributing of the films with dimension playing a big effect in the advertisement of the films, which would bring in more profit. I believe that my film would be released into the cinemas because I feel it would entertain the viewer’s due to the suspense and mystery also to gain the public eye and then later on in dvd, this is because it will then build bigger profits.
4. Who would be your audience for your media product?
The audience we targeted were the thriller viewers as our production genre is thriller, from questionnaires that we handed out, we analyzed our data received and found many things such as thrillers came under the favorite, which spurred us on to create a very unique thriller layout throughout our film. From our questionnaire we found that people looked for comedy in thriller films we didn’t take this on board as thrillers are typically known for there in depth nature keeping viewers on their feet.
We also found from our audience research that it’s the younger generations that view thrillers more than other genres such as horror, action or comedy. This is because thrillers contain many happenings such as violence or gunfights which can cause tension and excitement within the audience, and this is what younger more adrenalin filled viewers want.
We decided to target this age group anyway due to the interests they show in violence and other antics. We felt that then the audience viewing our film would pay more attention and interests in the happenings that occurred during the film. It will also appeal to this age group due the age of the actors in our film.
5. How did you attract address your audience?
We produced questionaries’ to see what changes could be made to our film, this then allowed us to change parts of the film which suited the viewer’s, adding extra appeal to our film. The scene when the bottle roles down the street but it can’t be seen was an appealing scene for the viewers as it instantly created suspense, making the audience think that something may happen. This is a good example of diegetic sound which is sound made by objects in the story, as it wasn’t added in, during the editing. We used non-diegetic sound in our film to create that little bit of an extra effect of keeping the viewers on their feet, by using slow deep music which sped up at parts of most excitement which really gave the total effect we wanted.
One particular point we found unusual when looking through the questionnaires was that a lot of negative feedback that came back from the smoking scene we felt this was an edge to our film as we felt it made it unique and gave the viewers the chance to see what the character was all about. The location of our film was also an edge, as it was filmed at night under street lamps in a built up area which made very hard filming but as we persevered I feel that we have achieved our aim of producing a quality film in a hard but perfect environment for creating suspense. The feedback from the questionnaires of the orange lighting from the street lamps was positive as they felt it also achieved out aim, by creating a unnerving feel among the audience.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I found during the time I have spent producing and filming my film there are many things that can go wrong firstly the weather which is natural and unpredictable force of nature can make it hard producing an accurate filming schedule as the weather may change causing an effect to timings and dates.
When filming we had to adapt to the video cameras quickly as they were very high quality meaning they picked up every move that was done by the person filming. So it was crucial time was taking when doing specific shots as movement was easily recognisable on the camera. When we did different camera angles it was crucial for us to create the effect that the victim could be easily recognised, by doing high shots making the victim look small. By doing this type of shot it makes him look like an easy target giving the viewers that impression.
We did find it hard to get the sequencing of the shots right, this was crucial for our film as it would look odd if shots kept getting filmed in different locations. During the editing we found the advantages of using it features it offered, this allowed us to create and add certain effects in our film such as during the change to a different scene an effect can be placed, giving a good transition between scenes making it a lot smoother to watch rather than it jumping from scene to scene. We added certain sound tracks to our film during the editing as we felt this gave it a much bigger effect during the tense scenes.
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt In the progression from it to the full product?
By doing the preliminary task I felt have learnt many skills, which I wouldn’t have known of if it wasn’t done. Such as I found it is always best to film a scene more than twice as if any mistakes have happened during filming you will always then have a backup clip.
Also various camera shots were trialled during the task as this allowed us to know which ones were more productive in capturing the audience attention.
From the preliminary task we all fitted in as a group this was a positive thing as it allowed tasks to be done and completed without any fuss over who’s doing what. In the group I felt I had a major part , by issuing ideas and addressing problems that I felt may affect the quality of our tasks.
When we received our audience feedback we took any of the negative criticisms positively and adapted on them allowing us to improve our productions. We felt that our film was very clear cut and explanatory allowing the viewer to work out the story going on. This was only capable with the good work done by the group. The most important thing I feel I have learnt during the filming of our product, as a group member is that if a group can’t work together efficiently the end product will be very poor.
