Evaluation

Evaluation

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Used
In our thriller opening we used a convention called the 'narrative' which is where a film is centered around a crime which happens at the beginning. We used this because we thought it was an effective and common convention that are used in thriller openings. We used this convention as we felt that most people are attracted to film by the first five minutes, by adding tension and excitement and crime in the opening we felt we can entice the viewers in and persuade them to watch the rest of the film. We used a POV (point of view shot) to give the viewers a good perspective of what the person finding all the girls belongings was feeling and how they were reacting to it, but saying this we made sure that we didn't reveal to much, but just enough for the audience to realize what might happen in the rest of the film. The crime that we have used is a kidnapping, this is what we wanted to centre our film plot around as we felt that the
 narrative was the perfect convention for this crime.

A film that is a prime example of the convention 'narrative' is The Dark Knight, this is because this film has used the same 'narrative' convention to show the robbery that the joker does at the start. This makes the audience think about what might happen in the rest of the film, as well as them getting the excitement and thrill of a crime happening in the very opening scene. It will then allow them to engross themselves into the movie hopefully no making them more likely to continue to watch the film all way through and hopefully watching the other films that are also in the sequel of The batman films. They use 'narrative' to create and make a series of events that then lead the 'antagonist' (the joker) and the 'protagonist' (batman) into a final conflict at the end of the film.

Developed 

Another convention in our thriller that we have chosen is 'someone in distress', many different thriller films also use this convention as a way of making characters think about the situation that's happening in the movie its also another great way of keeping viewers firmly on the edge of their seats. By having 'someone in distress' it gives the audience the impression that something drastic, or exciting is going to happen this makes the tension build until finally later on in the film you find out why. It works especially well in our thriller opening as we have many distressing voice mail's sent to the main character from a number of different family members, close friends and even the girls boyfriend it allows the viewers to think and is less predictable as we cant physically see the characters.

Another thriller film that has 'someone in distress' is the film blood diamond, although it has the same convention it somewhat does not develop the same as the opening to our thriller film. The film is set in west Africa and begins with a father and son walking home from the child's day at school just like any other ordinary day, until all of a sudden the child is abducted and and the father is forced to be a miner in the RUF. The film is different to ours as rather than focusing on a numerous amount of people in distress it focuses on only two individuals who are in distress as they are unable to find each other due to being taken away to do forced separate things. The film is also similar to ours as we don't actually manage to see the child again till the end of the film, and the plot of our movie is that she eventually returns after being found by the police at a location that is unknown with her deranged father.

Challenged

A convention that we challenged in the opening to our thriller film is a POV (point of view shot) with the point of view shot that we used throughout the opening of our thriller we enabled the audience to see and work out the other characters from another ones point of view. By allowing the point of view from that character that picks up the young girls items of the floor to investigate why they were their, we don't actually know who the character is but we can begin to work out what the girl maybe like and what she maybe into or what types of clothing she likes to wear. We decided to use the point of view shot as we found it more suitable for our story line and made it more exciting and intensifying, and it made the tension build up fast, we continued to use this shot all the way through of our opening, this was effective as it would make the viewers stick to watching the rest of the film which is what we wanted.

A film that also used many point of view shots like our own was 'shutter island' the film is taken for some of it in the eyes of 'Leonardo DiCaprio'. The point of view shots are mainly used in the opening scenes of the film which is what we were trying to do in our opening scene. Its taken from the characters point of view to build up tension and excitement as he walks into this new space (a mental asylum) a place to which the character is not familiar and comfortable with. He walks through experiencing the surroundings characters unusual behaviours and strange emotions and actions until he finally becomes to experiencing some of the same throughout his stay in the place. It makes the viewers curious as to what sort of person the person entering the asylum is like and whether he inhabits some of the same characteristics that he experience upon first meeting other patients that are being held there.


2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The link below has the answer to the question above:

3.  What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

The answer to this question is situated within the link below. 

http://nfgsmedia.wikispaces.com/Missing

4. Who would be the audience of our media product?

The type of person that would be interested in our thriller film depends on a lot of different factors, this include their: age, class, gender, location, it also includes their hobbies, interests and past times. My answer will include and explain everything about our ideal audience.

Thomas Clyde, also known as Tom to his friends is currently studying film and media at Bournemouth university where he lives with best friend Georgia who is studying the same course as him. Tom also enjoys watching psychological thriller films as he loves the suspense and tension that's always building throughout the film, but as well as enjoying watching psychological thriller films Tom's also into horror films as well, both Georgia and Tom share the same likes for the same genres of films so they often find themselves out at the cinema or on the sofa spending hours watching countless horror films together. Tom also likes to read in his spare time he feels that by reading a book he can get the most out of life as there is always something new to learn. He can also be interested in filming magazines, hes always interested when the latest films are coming out in the cinema and when his favorite film comes out on DVD or BLU-RAY. He also enjoys surfing the internet looking at what other people think of movies both old and new, he enjoys making comments about what hes seen and engaging in group discussions about likes and dislikes of films online. Tom is very family orientated, he has two older brothers and one younger sister, so being one of the youngest in the family some of the things he does maybe influenced upon by his older siblings e.g likes and dislikes, favorite films and music. His family often have big family gatherings and parties, and Tom is always eager to come home to see his mum dad, brothers and sisters as often as he can get leave from university. But despite this Tom is eager to travel the world with Georgia, they want to volunteer together in Zambia Africa helping out with a local school project enabling kids that couldn't go to school to give them a place to learn and gain a future. Tom is also quite aware of fashion, he likes to be able to dress up in designer clothes, and he thinks that his appearance is the most important part of him as an individual. Hes always shopping at places like Hollister, Jack Wills, SuperDry etc, and he is not short from money off his mum and dad and can come across at times as a bit of a spoilt brat.

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 technology from the process of constructing a product?

During the production of this thriller opening I have most certainly gained a great deal of knowledge about a variety of different technologies that we have used both on the internet and on different software programmes. I have previously had the chance to experience how the technologies work but have gone from knowing the basics to now knowing how they work exactly, this post will explain and inform you of what I have learnt.

Blogger
Before starting this coursework project I had no idea that the programme 'Blogger' even existed, but after a few hours of getting to know the blogging site I was able to manage to set up and design the perfect blog for both myself and the rest of the group. After setting it up I was able to post blog posts effectively and efficiently which is a massive benefit when it came to planning and preparing opening sequence to our thriller film. I was startled at how easy Blogger had made it to navigate around the site allowing me to change different settings, including adjusting the layout, changing the background and making fonts different sizes, colours and embedding YouTube video's into our different posts. We could also tag our posts using key tags and for example 'Preliminary task' this was extremely useful as it made it simple to be able to find posts without having to scroll through every post that we have made to find a specific one, this was also handy for looking through both group posts and posts done individually. I feel that personally all of these easy to access and easy to navigate functions on the website was very helpful and allowed us to create a successful and professional blog of all the events and decisions that took place during the creation of our thriller opening.

Prezi

In order to make some of our blog posts more interesting to read and to look at we decided to use the website Prezi, this is a cloud based presentation software for exploring and sharing ideas on a virtual canvas. I had personally never used this website before, and when first using it I found it difficult to navigate around. However, after using it over and over again I eventually got used to the layout and set up of the website and found myself creating numerous presentations in which I was able to insert a range of texts, images and different shapes which came in very handy.I think that It has been a big beneficial factor for our group, this is because its a new and exciting way of presenting information in a different type of format.

YouTube

In contrast to Blogger and Prezi: YouTube is a site that I am very familiar with and have had a long time experiencing what its all about and how it works. As a group YouTube was the main source of uploading our  preliminary task and our final opening piece onto. I was fairly comfortable with doing this as I have had a few past experiences with uploading videos onto you tube. I also felt quite comfortable with tagging and the placement of annotations onto our final piece as well as our preliminary task, and was able to manage embedding our videos that had been put on YouTube onto our blog. We were able to then get instant feedback, we could listen to what people thought and then that allowed us to make the necessary changes to anything that needed to be improved upon.

Final Cut Express

I had never once used final cut express before starting this new and exciting project, and upon first use I was baffled at how to use it, I didn't feel as comfortable using this software as i did with YouTube and blogger. But like the other programmes I grew to understand how it worked, it took time to find where everything was but eventually I managed to get the hang of it and when producing our preliminary task I got to test out all the different functions that the programme had to offer. I got to play around with the clips, move them around, place them wherever i felt they needed to go and tailor them to how I wanted them to be. As a result of  being able to play around with the software I become comfortable in being able to use different and more extreme functions being able to add exciting effects. This website was one of the primary sources of the success of creating our opening piece, i feel that as a group we learnt how to make a video using new software as well as gaining knowledge of a new programme that we hadn't had the chance to experience with in the past.

Apple i mac's

I have had previous experience of working on apple mac's and other apple equipment such as ipad's and apple macbook's. Because I have previously used apple equipment, and because at home I also own a few of apples items, I am comfortable and able to work with these items well and find them easy to navigate around. I was not confused or didn't have any trouble when trying to find the different programmes on the computer, and when wanting to upload different files to the blog I was able to easily access these with no trouble at all. I did however learn new skills on the mac's some of these being able to print screen different pages and work which could then be evaluated and wrote about on the blog. The mac was very essential for our work, this is because it had the correct software that we needed to to edit our production, with the help of final cut express.

Canon Legria Digital Camcorder

I have in the past had the chance and the experience of using a camcorder, not on the same as this one but one similar with the same functions. Because of using one of these in the past I could easily work out how to use it, this made it easy for me to film our preliminary task and be able to direct the others in my group on also how to use this piece of equipment. It was easy to zoom in and out, play and pause, turn off and on and play back recorded footage. It allowed us to shoot our opening in high definition, and it gave our piece more of a professional and better look. I believe that the camcorder that we used benefited us greatly when giving looking at the overall quality of the opening to our thriller piece. 

All in all I feel that, these numerous and different types of technologies have helped us with the, filming, editing and overall production of our thriller opening. I feel that as an individual they all helped us create a more proffesional piece of coursework, and that is one of the most important thing to us. As a group we have all learnt how to handle and use the different technologies that were available to us and we were very lucky in being able to use a wide range of different materials. I have learnt a great deal of information during this project and feel that as well as being able to learn more I've been able to try out new things that I didn't before know anything about.

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

To answer this question we added lots of annotations to our preliminary task discussing our progression into our practical work, the confidence we had when using the different equipment and how successful we have been overall, the video and link can be found and watched below.

I believe that doing the preliminary task helped me a lot before eventually making our final coursework piece,  it prepared me with how to use the camera when filming our task and it also allowed me to experience adding tags to our video of which we had to eventually. I have also felt that the preliminary helped me to practice our research and planning before creating a final video with edits and tags. I found that i need to do a lot more planning when it came to the real thriller opening, and because of getting the chance to practice this i think i did the right amount for the final results.