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

For our media studies project we were asked to create an opening for a thriller, a typical thriller contains many elements to keep the audience interested in the film. The audience expectations for a thriller is to be frightened or worried, he or she expects to feel a sense of mystery until the end of the film when loose ends are tied together and solved, however it could potentially be left on a cliff hanger in order for the producer to make a sequel to the film.
For our opening we want the audience to be hooked onto watching the rest of the film, we wanted three elements to our opening these are mystery, confusion and worried. I think that these elements will encourage the audience to keep watching the rest of the movie. Other things that are required the camera shots, we wanted a variation in camera shots, short sharp shots will keep the audience engrossed on the action along with some long length shots contrasting with the short shots to create a mixture of emotions. The dialogue must be accurate to what is happening in the film and related. It was important for us to create a narrative so that we knew how our opening would fit in with the rest of the film, it is important to create this as well as we know what to do and where each shot fits when it come to editing it.
To gain a good understanding of what is expected in our opening, we did some research of different thriller openings. The films in which I researched on were. ‘Seven’, ‘psycho’ and ‘Leon’ what I found similar in all of these openings is the use of a p.o.v shots. There were no big, out of the ordinary sfx so it gave a realistic approach to what is going on in the storylines. I felt that the directors in these openings, all had the elements in which we wanted to use them all contained a sense of mystery, confusion and worrying which makes all these openings successful and effective.
The use of camera work in these films is very successful. This is what creates the sense of confusion; every opening I researched contained so many short sharp shots building suspense and confusion till they reached a pivotal moment. This is exactly what I want to make happen in my opening.
I feel that from all research done on different thriller openings influenced my ideas because it gave me a good understanding of what is expected, also it helped develop some ideas i.e. a chase scene, or death scene. It also helped me in the shots I used. I used short sharp shots to show chaos and confusion, and long shots to show a drop in suspense and no emotion. All these helped my opening.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The group which we wanted to aim our thriller film towards is the teens, we targeted our film as a 15+ certificate, this helped us build a picture of what we can and can’t use in our opening. We wanted our thriller to be a modern piece so we had to have up to date, modern, fashionable costume, we gave the thugs hooded jumpers, this is because in today’s society, many people that wear hoodys try and avoid being seen, and a represented as thuggish characters. The class we aimed our film at was 2nd class working people, we wanted people to be able to relate to the film and achieving this was vital. Our film was also aimed at both genders; this was the reason for using both male and female actors and actresses. The representation of the characters in the film is a mixture of various characters, a suspicious character, thugs, an innocent female, and a victim. These were all represented in their actions and there place in the scene, i.e. the victim being beaten up, and the female being chassed.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product?

When distributing the film, there are various ways in which a product can be distributed nowadays. In my personal opinion, I think that cinema release is an old age thing and keeping up with modern times in the film we must keep up with modern times now. That is why I would choose to put the film out on DVD defiantly, rental to start with i.e. blockbusters (a well known rental company). And then release to DVD and sell in popular stores. Before distribution, the DVD I think must have a certificate to reassure the public audience. We would gain a certificate through the British board of film classification (bbfc). This company will rate the film, study it thoroughly and give it a rate i.e. 12, 15, 18. But the target we are aiming for is a 15+ certificate. The location of the film is the UK and the size of the audience we want to reach is a worldwide, i.e. USA, EU, Australia ECT. The reason for the choice of certificate and location of distribution was through other similar thriller films, which I had studied, these were 15-18 certificated films and these too were sold worldwide and very successful films.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience chosen to aim our thriller film at was teenagers around the age of 15+, to gain information about what the audience expects at this age we sent out questionnaires. The feedback I received from the results showed, that around this age the audience most enjoyed thriller films, action films and comedy films, which is a positive thing for our film. I then sub-divided the thriller as a genre into several genres again, the audience preferred action thrillers, crime thrillers and conspiracy thrillers. This giving me an idea of what the audience would like in the film. So a chase scene would be accepted and liked by the audience. Overall the research into the target audience was very worth while I learnt that the audience wants to see, action, excitement they also want the film to be crime related but with a sense of humour as well so the film is not taken to seriously but still has a cutting edge to it.
The demographics relating to the audience is where the film is aimed at and the likely audience we already know that the audience are males and females. There age being 15+. The psychographics of the audience are to be an audience with a very questionable mind, asking lots of questions and try to solve the film before getting to the end, at the age of 15+ the audience want to be able to relate to a film and sometimes idolise the characters. Another way the audience thinks is attitudes and opinions towards the characters. At the age of 15 everyone knows the differences between right and wrong, the audience however will react different to this depending on the point of view and whether they take sides with a bad character or good character.
The demographics and psychographics in all the thriller films that I researched all had different opinions and views. All contains the same level of violence and were all aimed at the same level of audience (15+), but the thoughts and mixtures of emotions were up to how the audience thought about each character and how they responded to them.

How did you attract/address your audience?

There are many ways we attracted the audience to our thriller, one element was the modern day representation of the film, we made the audience feel as if it could happen to them, it was accurate to today society and the audience were able to relate, another attraction to the film was the way we made the audience feel they were there using various camera angles, the most successful camera shot used was the p.o.v this put the audience where the action was happening and made them feel as if they were there. We were able to incorporate some camera trickery, which meant using editing techniques to create a realistic CCTV perspective during the fight scene. The mixture of emotion we wanted the audience to feel would play a big part of the opening, the main emotions we wanted the audience to feel was a sense of mystery, the feel of suspense, the feeling of not knowing what is going to happen next and finally an element of confusion. These engaged the audience into the opening and made them address the film in a manner of wanting to know what happens next. I think me met all the audiences expectations which we learnt when sending out our questionnaires I think all elements expected were met. The bbfc’s certificate meant that only people over the age of 15+ we met the bbfc’s guidelines. The certificate was a positive aspect because it meant that the audience were able to make a prejudgment on what to expect. The audiences reaction to the thriller opening were very positive, I sent out feedback sheets to three members of the audience asking them what they thought and whenever the film met all the key elements of a thriller, and did it meet there expectations, from what I received back it was clear that we achieved this, the audience felt we met the thriller genre and they liked the cctv footage, however they commented on the lack of dialogue and sound in the production was a problem. Never the less the audience enjoyed what they saw, and based on the opening they all said that they would watch the film through to the end.

What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product?

There are many things that I learnt about filming and editing which I did not know before I started. The camera we used was good camera, the controls were simple and the video quality was superb. The program that was used to edit the software was adobe premier pro this is a common editing software for video footage and I felt that I got to grips with the software and all its features, effects and controls very well. I have important thing I learnt is that it is not as easy as you think to film and edit some footage, there is a great deal of preparation and thought to filming. I wanted all of our shots to flow and connect well with each other and by using the fade in and out, and ghosting effects we were able to make this happen. Our biggest achievement when editing was our attention to detail, especially in the CCTV footage this was well constructed and worked really well with the rest of the footage. Overall there were no major issues when filming, it was very time consuming but this was necessary to achieve a good opening. The only other issue with our production was the realisation of the lack of dialogue and sound. It wasn’t until we came to edit did we realised we lacked this which at this point it was too late, none the less we managed to work round it, emphasising the sound that was captured, i.e. deep breaths, and footsteps.

Look back at your preliminary task; what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I think that since the first piece I had ever recorded and edited I have made a big progression; I have learnt various different techniques, tricks and tips along the way. My biggest progression I think was in the editing stage. The editing was the favourite part in the filmmaking and finishing process; my skills on adobe premier pro have developed increasingly. I feel my attention to detail has improved, also knowing what works where. And getting away with using the same shot more than once. The effects on adobe are great fun; they give you so many options of what you can do to your frame, each effect giving you a different shot type each time. I.e. black and white, negative lens, blurs, fades all these things I have increased in my knowledge. The strengths of my preliminary task was the way me and my partner took a fairly straight forward task and made it into an exciting, creative and imaginative piece. There was however a problem with the length of the piece, I felt that maybe our opening was not long enough so finding frames and making them last longer was an issue but we managed to get around it and completed the task with a piece 3 – 4 minutes long. Having the pliminary task to do before hand helped me understand how the cameras worked, also how adobe premier pro worked, I felt it was a good task in getting to know the equipment. I feel that when given a task like the main thriller task, planning is vital, having time schedules. And a storyboard, gave general idea of what the shots should look like. Doing research into the genre was incredibly helpful, it gave us an outline of what to expect and what to cover in terms of shot angles and techniques and the research into the target audience helped us gain an understanding of what they wanted. A problem during production was the lack of a tripod; we managed to overcome this though with a steady hand and using a street sign as support. And you could not tell the difference, all our shots we smooth flowing, neither jumpy nor too quick moving the speed was spot on this was our only real issue through the production. If I have the opportunity to re-design and re-shoot the film I would change the story slightly, make it more jumpy and surprising as a personal interest and also by adding a lot more dialogue into the film would make our piece extremely successful. Other than these two issues I felt there’s not a great deal worth changing my members and me were very happy with the result of the finished production. Keeping all group members happy was key, as we did not want any falling out. Each of us played roles in which we were happiest doing; one member was the cameraman, whilst others were helping with the acting and organisation. And when it came to editing, we all shared our thoughts and ideas and incorporated them as much as possible. Overall I believe that we worked very successful together and reach the criteria set by the audience to produce a good thriller opening.