Evaluation
1. In what ways does your media product use , develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Used
In our media product we use a convention called the narrative, which is when a film is centred around a crime that takes place at the beginning. We used this because we felt it was one of the main conventions used in thriller openings. It is used to draw the audience in as people are usually attracted to watching a crime based movie, it also encourages them to start to ask the question as to who was it. It was what also allowed us to use a POV shot to start investigating what has happened. We do not show much although we do show enough to make the audience realise that a crime has taken place. The crime that is given away to the audience is a kidnapping, this is what we wanted to centre our film around as there are so many storyline that we could potentially do with this convention. Also the music we use with the film makes the mood a lot more tense which works well with the narrative.
A film that also uses the narrative is The Dark Knight, it centres around a bank robbery where the antagonist a.k.a the Joker kills his mean, and steals all the money from Gotham bank. The film is a sequel to the award winning film Batman Begins, which also uses the narrative. They use it to start of a series of events that then lead to the protagonist and the antagonist in a conflict. This was one of the reasons as to why we used the narrative as we new we could lead the film down a path that lead to a final fight at the end that decides the fate of the film. It also makes the film a lot more editing as the audience does not know what is coming next. I also think that it can sometimes be used to create confusion like in this film when The Joker kills his own, this begins to define the main antagonist as a man who wants all or nothing. Another convention that we used in our opening was antagonist shown in opening credits of the movie. We used this in the last few seconds of the opening credits, as the car drives away we get a glimpse of the antagonist. However we don't see enough of the protagonist to identify who it is, which I find important as it creates suspense and ensures that the audience doesn't know what the villain looks like. The antagonist is presented as some one who is mentally unstable as they have just kidnapped a teenage girl and ran away in a car. This again gets the audience to start questioning who the antagonist really is, which is what we wanted to achieve in the opening credits of our film. I also think showing the antagonist in the opening makes the audience start to feel the girls vulnerability.
A film that also shows the antagonist at the beginning of the film is the Da vinci code, in the opening few scenes the antagonist is chasing after a man. We do not know why he is chasing after him but the film makers have tried to make him look like a stereo-typical antagonist. This puts the audience on the edge of their seat as they realise what sort of antagonist the film is using because they will recognise it form films they may have seen before. This is because they have chosen to use a stereo typical which means it works to the films advantage as people know what sort of bad guy it is. However in my opinion this doesn't always work in thriller films as i believe that the main antagonist should think on his feet and be spontaneous, this makes the film unpredictable and a lot more intense on the audience.Developed
A example of a convention that we have developed Someone in Distress. Thrillers usually have this as it is a great way to get the audience on the edge of their seat. Someone in distress usually gives the impression to the audience that someone is in some kind of trouble. We developed this in our opening credits as we show that someone is in some kind of distress, however we do not introduce the character at all throughout the opening. This works well because we also play voice messages throughout it, allowing the audience to get to know her and her family, although the they don't actually see her in the footage. I think that the voice mails work well as it makes the clip less predictable because the audience don't get to know the character fully they cant stereo type her.
Another thriller that has someone in distress is Blood diamond, it uses the same convention however it doesn't develop it like our opening. The film starts off in Africa with father and son walking back from school. The son is then abducted while the Dad is turned into a miner for the RUF. This variant of the convention works well in there film because the dad is in distress, while at the same time so is the son. Its different to ours because it doesn't focus the audience on one person instead the audience is supposed to think about both the people in distress. However a way that it is similar is that the child isn't seen until the end of the film, he isn't shown through most of the opening. The audience therefore are drawn into thinking about him. This particular convention also works well with this film because it gives the character a chance to develop during the period his son is away.Another convention we used was an Innocent girl in a corrupt world. We used this in our opening because it makes the audience distressed as they begin to question whether or not it could happen in real life. We developed it again by not showing the innocent girl, as leaving out the character creates suspicion as to who she might be. A lot of thrillers use this as it is great for creatin the thrill that a thriller needs, it also gets the audience to start thinking thus it is common in phycological thrillers.
A film i know of that uses this is abduction, which is when a boy nearly gets kidnapped and his father and mother are shot in his home. As the plot thickens he finds out that there was a corrupt CIA agent that ordered for his parents to be killed. This particular convention is used well in this film as it is the bases of the storyline.
Challenged
This is an image taken from shutter island as we can see the opening of the film uses a POV shot. This is used at the beggining of the film to build up excitment as we are seeing it from the main characters point of view however we dont actually see him at this point. Its taking it from the main characters point of view while he is walking into the mental asylum. This makes us want to see the chracter even more as the audience is curious as to what sort of person is entering the asylum. In my opinion the shot works well at the start as its a great way to start the film and start to build up curiousity.
We also used a POV shot to start off our thriller as we found it more suitable for our storyline and to make the opening a lot more exciting and intense. We challenged shutter islands POV shot, as we tried it in a different scenario. Instead of being in a mental asylum we took it to a normal everyday scene that has abnormal circumstamces, all of the main chracters items are found on the floor in a mess. In my opinion this worked well inb our opening as it stays as one type of shot the whole way through and we basically follow in someones footsteps.Another convention we challenged were the order of credits, we did this by showing the title of the film last. Analyseing other films we can see that the title usually comes before the opening few scenes. We decided to place the title at the ende because that way the whole opening is building up and up to a climax and then leaves you on a cliff hanger, whcich is when the title comes up and the film would supposedly begin.
Another film that uses this is seven, it starts with an opening few scenes then the opening credits begin. After all of this the title of the film suddenly pops up unexpectitly. Before it does this, we watch footage of the murderer preparing himself for his next kill, which is very distressing for the audience and makes this part more phycologically intense. we wanted to incorperate this into ours as we thought it was more dramatic if we placed the title right at the end of our credits.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4. Who would be the audience of your media product?
It is very hard to choose an audience that will most likely watch our thriller due to different people liking different things. Plus where people live and who they hang around with can overly effect the films they enjoy and watch. So I am going to make a profile of who I believe will most likely watch our thriller based on my audience research.
Age: 40
Class: Middle
Gender: Female
Location: Bishops Stortford
Hobbies: watching Films/TV
Interests: Sports, Science
Pastimes: Reading (something that requires intelligence)
What they spend there money on: they will most likely spend there free money on a movie as a treat or perhaps a new book that may have just been released.
Beliefs: Cristian
Values: Equality
In my opinion the ideal audience will most likely be this as middle aged people that can keep up with what is going on will enjoy the film most. the reason I think a female will enjoy it more is because the film is about a girl who gets kidnapped. which is perhaps something a mother could relate to.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
In order to complete this question we placed a series of annotations onto our completed thriller opening video 'missing' this can therefore be viewed at the link from our YouTube channel below.
I feel that as an individual we have managed as a group to attract the right audience, and managed to meet their expectations and hopes of what they wanted in a thriller film and that they thought long and hard about how the felt whilst watching our opening to our thriller.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Before I started the coursework i had no previous experience of this website. Over the course of the last few weeks i have learnt how to make posts, Import pictures and videos, make hyperlinks and Spell check my posts. Although I found it difficult at first to use this website, I soon became familiar with it and soon began to find it easier ti post quickly and swiftly. Designing our blog was very quick and simple as i found it simple to use, we also already had an idea of what we wanted it to look like before designing it.
The group used you tube for research and planning as well as posting our videos on to the Internet. As far as experience goes with using this website, I felt I was very experienced as I could use it quickly and efficiently. When it came to research and planning the site was very useful as it had a very large variety of thriller clips and openings that the group could use. We were able to analyze different thriller openings then work out what worked well and what could be applied to our opening. We also used the site to post our preliminary task so other people could see it. We are also going to post our final piece on so we can receive feed back on our piece.
Another website that I wasn't familiar with was Prezi, a site that can be used to make presentations in an entertaining way. I used this website to create short and entertaining presentations with my group. The website was very useful as it allowed us to present our ideas in a creative manner, as well as using a different method to present our work onto the blog. Having no previous experience of the site I sometimes found it confusing to use, however after spending some time using it i was then able to work quickly with it.
Having experience of using sites like this in the past, I was able to work swiftly and efficiently with this particular site. We used it to find copyright free music for the thriller opening. One thing I found confusing about this site was the fact that it was very difficult to search for particular songs, it was very confusing as they crammed so much text onto one page. When we found the song we wanted it was very simple to download and transport to whatever device we wanted it on. The site, in my opinion was great for giving us a variety of copyright music which we needed for our thriller.
The camera we used to film was the HD cannon. I have no previous experience of using a camera like this making it sometimes difficult to film (at first). After a while of using the camera I soon began to use it quicker and a lot better. The camera was great as it offered great quality footage but was also easy to work around. The one thing that I found difficult with this camera was the amount of battery it had, it was hard sometimes to film all what we needed as the time we had was very little due to the amount of charge. The camera was very simple as it showed clearly what to press to use certain functions. The zoom function was very good as well as it could zoom in from a distance. To the left is a picture of the exact camera we used for the whole of our filming.
The tripod was yet another piece of equipment that i have never used before. However it was extremely simple to use and was a very accurate piece of equipment. I found it very handy to have as it meant we could get steady shots for the opening. Although for our final piece we did not use a tripod, for our preliminary it was great. It stopped the camera shaking when it was moved making the shot look a lot better.
Having no previous experience of using this program, I was eager to try it out and compare it to the Windows alternative which I have used before. Final Cut express was at first very complicated as I had never used anything like it before. After some time experimenting and getting to know the program I started to find it easier to use and a lot better than Windows movie maker, due to the program being a lot more professional.It also had a great variety of effects and edits that we could do/make, meaning we could make our opening look and sound a lot better through using this program on our opening. One complaint i would have over the program is that we had to render everything we did, meaning our time was being consumed by rendering the video. This also slowed the Macs down dramatically affecting their performance and meaning we had to wait a very long time for it to render, before we could do anything else.
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
In the preliminary take I feel I have learnt a lot, it helped me learn a little more about the equipment we were using as I had no previous experience before. It also helped a lot in terms of making the final piece, as we started to get an idea of what we wanted to include. Also it helped with the research as it allowed us to work out what we can and cant do with the equipment we had. The preliminary helped me learn what camera shots were great to use in a thriller as well as we used a variety in the preliminary task.
