Question seven - Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full project?

Looking back to my preliminary task I can actually see how much has changed since then and how much I've learnt.

 

With these two clips we can compare how the editing, camera work and the lighting have changed. To be completely and brutally honest, the preliminary task editing was nothing compared to the editing for our final project, editing for our prelim task was basically transferring the clips onto the computer, cutting out parts that didn't fit well, putting them in a sequence and adding some music to it using soundtrack pro, which then seemed like so much work, but now comparing it to the work that was done for our final project it was much simpler. Not much has actually changed in our camera work, except that we've started using more equipment for it, like a dolly. Our lighting however has changed, simply because we didn't use any special lighting equipment in our preliminary task and in our final project we used reflectors on the characters so that we could see them clearly.

Another thing that I have learnt is how to work in a group, we had to work around each other schedules and classes, for example, we'd all come together at some point in the week to talk about when we were free to film and edit, we even made up a little chart that showed when each of us had a lesson or couldn't be in after school. This actually helped a lot because we could see when one another would be in the media suite editing and we could go and join them.

Overall I was actually quite pleased with how both turned out in the end.

 Another difficult task was making sure we had a free room to film in when our actors were free, that actually proved very difficult since one of our actors was an assistant headteacher and the week we were able to film had a lot of open evenings and parent evenings and target setting day...not exactly the best week was it?

Finally, I think I actually learnt some things about myself while filming, one, I definitely prefer being behind the camera, two, I panic a lot near deadlines and three, even though media can be stressing at times, it's an incredibly fun experience that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys a challenge.
Thank you for giving me this experience. 

Question six - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?

Question five - How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted our audience by appealing to their normal standards of thriller films. In our film we address the conventions of thrillers, such as the suspense we created in our film opening, this would appeal to our audience because it is what they are familiar with in a thriller film. As an example, I have inserted a screen capture of one of the scenes in our film, in this scene our student, Luke, starts breathing deeply while clutching his head, this builds suspense in our scene as our audience do not know what is going to happen and as his breathing increases the suspense rises.

We also attracted them by using a cliff hanger in our opening, this draws the audiences attention by making them wonder whats about to happen, this is done in other thriller films, the most popular being The Sixth Sense.

We also attracted our audience by using elements of aggressive and violent behavior which usually go hand in hand with thrillers, for example, here is a screen capture from our film opening of Mr Frost being aggressive towards our student.

We knew how to target our audience because of statistics from a popular website called Pearl and Dean, which display film statistics, such as, the gender who viewed it most, the age who viewed it most and the class who viewed it most, for example, one of the thriller films we chose to target ourselves around was The Dark Knight, which has basically the same ratings as we hope ours would.

With this information, we found that the most likely people to watch a thriller were males aged 15 - 24, which is why we chose to target that specific age and gender for our film. 

Thank you.

Question four - Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our film had to be planned before we could start shooting it, we had to look into things like classification and our target audience. The following is what we decided on.

The BBFC film classification for our film is 12, we chose this because our film does not contain any swearing or severe violence, however it does contain scenes that some viewers may find disturbing. Our target audience for our film would be mostly white males aged 12 - 25. Below is a link to the BBFC site explaining in more detail the film rating 12.

Link to BBFC site

For our film we had to come up with someone who would fit our target audience, this was our T.A.P. (Target Audience Profile). It would contain information about their age, name, likes and what they do for a living. Below is ours.

This is Sam, he is a nineteen year old white male. He enjoys films such as Casino Royale, Inception, Donnie Darko and Taken. He has currently applied to Leeds University to do a media course. He lives in his family home and spends most of his time playing Skyrim. He has accounts on both Facebook and Twitter in which he uses on a regular basis. He loves going to film festivals with friends. His preferred music taste is Indie.

The reason we have chosen to target our film at this particular audience is because it has proven to be popular among the certain age, for example,

In these screen grabs of the dark knight, which is classified as a thriller, the most popular age range viewing it is 15 - 24, which is very similar to our target age. Also it shows that it is viewed mostly by males, instead of females.

This screen grab comes from Pearl and Dean, where information like this can be found about any film.

Thank you.  

Question three - What kind of media institution would distribute your media product and why?

Question two - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In this question I will be talking about the social groups in our film and how they were represented.

There were actually many social groups represented in our film opening, these were, youth, student, adults and teachers. The youths we had were also our students, they were, Rio, Brad, Michael and Katie, our adult was also our teacher, Mr Frost.

We were able to present them as youths by their clothing and props, for example Katie was wearing skinny jeans, a jumper and a jacket, and teenage girls wear these usually. The same can be said for Rio’s clothes; they were simple but were identifiable as what a teenage boy would wear. The props that identified them as youths were their phones; Michael had his phone out when time was stopped, also Rio’s headphones are visible when they are walking out of the classroom, youths are regularly seen on their phones and listening to music through their headphones. The way they are represented as students are their bags and folders containing work, also the fact that they are in a classroom with whiteboards and desks shows where they are and this identifies them as students in detention.

The way Mr Frost is represented, as a teacher is his costume, dialogue, camera angles and his props. His costume is a sensible suit, comfortable for walking round in all day which shows authority whereas the student’s normal clothes does not. The prop that shows that he is a teacher are his pen, which he points at Luke and slam on the table. He also has a school pass around his neck with the school badge on it and his picture; teachers usually wear this so they are able to walk around the school freely. 

The dialogue also shows that Mr Frost is a teacher, for example, “Mr Gregory, Mr Gregory, LUKE!” is one of Mr Frosts lines in our film, this shows him starting off formal but when that fails, he calls out the students first name, this is done frequently by a teacher when they are trying to get a student’s attention. The camerawork is one of the most important things that show that he is a teacher; the camera angle on him is high, showing him off as taller than Luke, this shows the authority the teacher has over his students.

 

 These same social groups are also represented in films such as sixth sense

In sixth sense there are three of these social groups. Cole is the student in the school.

Next it’s Malcolm, he’s the adult

And finally there are Coles teachers in the school, one is called Stanley Cunningham.

Chronicle

There are three of these social groups in chronicle. Andrew, Matt and Steve are the main students in the film

They are also the youth in the film along with the other students.

And the adults are Andrews’s father and mother.

  

I feel that our representations of these social group were quite good when it came to showing Mr Frost as a teacher and an adult because it was clearly shown in his costume and his dialogue, however I feel we could have done better at showing that Brad was a student, I think that putting him in the school uniform would have been a better way of representing him as a student. The way we represented them as youths though I felt was very successful, especially with the props that were used.

Thank you.

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

In this post I am going to explain how our film, uses, develops and challenges thriller conventions.

First off our film follows the conventions by imitating existing idents, the ident our film opening imitates is Spyglass, it imitates how the ident is set on a black background. earlier in my blog I researched film idents, they are used to give credit to the film studios.

Above are the image and video of the ident that was imitated. The main difference between the two idents is that our ident grows onto the screen as if coming towards the camera, which is a simple animation, whereas the animation for Spyglass is more drawn out and more professional. 

Once again referring to my blog, I researched conventions of thrillers, this is what audiences expect to see when they watch a certain genre. to make this simpler I'm going to keep referring to my previous work, it would be easier to follow along if you have read it. It was the last post created in November. 

Our film follows these conventions by creating suspense when Luke starts to breath heavily and pull at his hair, it makes the audience wonder what is going to happen. The heavy breathing is also used in thrillers. We also use camerawork such as, fast changes in our shots, an example of when we use this would be when Luke is stopping time, it keeps flicking between him and the clock. Another convention of the camerawork we use would be the close ups we do of Luke and Mr Grayham, the most noticeable is when there is an extreme close up of Luke just as he stops time, this is actually one of my favorite shots because of the build up to it, it worked really well. here is an example of extreme close up's used in Psycho's famous shower scene:

Another convention that we used is our cliffhanger, this is used in a lot of thriller films, the first film that comes to mind that does this in it's opening is sixth sense.

To develop the thriller conventions, our film gives our main character an ability that no one else has, the ability to stop time, however this has negative effects, it causes people to become violent towards him, this is clearly shown in our opening. This develops it because in most thrillers the protagonist has powers that don't have an effect on themselves, for example, in the film Push, the main characters have abilities that do not affect them, certain characters have these certain abilities, like they can move objects or see the future or make people believe in things that aren't real. However, I can think of one film that does affect the characters in some way, the film is called chronicle, it is where a group of teenagers get abilities from a meteor, this allows them to fly and move objects, however a consequence of this is that if they try to do something before they are strong enough, their noses start to bleed like it's causing too much pressure in their head.  

Our film has also challenged thriller conventions, it has done this by using a school student as the protagonist, whereas in other thrillers the protagonist is usually a group of people or someone older. another way we have challenged it is by the student being victimized by the teacher from the very beginning, an accepted convention is that teachers are usually kind but strict when they have to be, but in our film the teacher is openly violent to Luke as he slams his hand on the desk close to where Luke is sitting.

So that is how our film, uses, develops and challenges thriller conventions, hope you like it.