In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media product is Mystery Thriller, when I was comparing this to Memento which is also a mystery Thriller, which is a well known film, it is clear that we haven’t challenged the stereotype for this specific film. The genetic convention of the narrative is normally revolved around crime, like murder is shown in our opening sequence you see a person having flash backs to someone murdering a girl this shows the first two minutes of the film conforms the general convention of narrative. In our opening sequence we have one antagonist but the audience doesn’t find out who it is until the end, however we have a few protagonists who are the women he is killing. Throughout the film Matt the main male character is getting these flash backs of these girls being killed, however he does not know who is doing it all he see is the flash back and then he sees the weapon that has killed these girls in him room. This also gives the mystery effect to it as our Thriller is Mystery, as we don’t find out anything till the end, and as you see the guy walking out the house in the opening sequence you get the audience confused and making them more intrigued.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
As we have a group of teen girls at university, that will interest that particular group of people, with our original idea we were aiming it at just teens between 16-19 but as we began to change the plot and storyline of our thriller we opened it up to boys at the similar age and also a bit older, such as Matt the main character is in his thirties he is a white British male and is middle class, he has been working for the police and is training to be a detective. The five girls are aged between 18 and 20, living in a house in their second year of university. We have represented the main character Matt to conform the stereotype of being dominant to women because they are his victims but also we have also challenged the stereotype and made him vulnerable character because he hasn't got anyone to talk to about these flashbacks/dreams as he doesn't want anyone thinking he is different/insane which could then lead to him losing his opportunity of being a detective. The girls who are shown in the film that are being killed have been shown as typical university students, partying and socialising until they get taken by the killer and get killed, and then are shown as vulnerable too because they don't want to die and they are just innocent girls. Our film was said to be targeted to mostly girls/women on the age 17 and above, this links to our film because the film is made up of characters in the same age group. We did this because we could make the audience relate to the characters because of their age and then people who are in university would know it is realistic. However it also links to boys the similar age, as crime is involved which boys that age seems to be interested in.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
As it is a film it would be distributed by a film company however in my opinion it would not be distributed to any big Hollywood company’s as our idea was very simply, and a very small budgeted film and most probably would not be shown in the cinema it would just come straight out on DVD. We feel that our film is very basic, and hard to come up with idea that will make it more appealing to watch and to expand it to make it better that’s why we feel that there is people out there who could come up with a similar idea with a better structure, which will then stand out more in the marketing aspect of it.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
Our target audience for our Opening Thriller was teenage girls between sixteen and eighteen, when we were basing our target audience we thought of the typical stereotypical teenage girl. Who loves shopping, going to parties, drinking, going out with there friends watching movies and listening to music. We thought this would be perfect for our target audience, as it has that all in our film, as the beginning starts with a group of girls drinking getting ready for a night out. So in a way we have based it around them. We then asked our friend if they would be interested in watching something like this as they are similar age to the target audience, they all said there opinion which then helped us to change and adjust what we needed to do for our thriller. We also looked it up on the internet to see what other media students have done, which also helped us out a lot. As it is a mystery, we also have to think will teenage girls want to watch a thriller mystery, will it appeal to them, and there friends that they will go with to watch the movie. So then we also have to make it appeal to boys as well of the similar age. This is when we add in the crime part to our thriller, so it has some violence in it. This then makes people more eager to see it as it has everything they want to see. Throughout this I have shown the genders representing each stereotypical role, where the man is the killer and the women our victims. With the man however does not want to be a killer, so our male character represents both good and bad, then the women are shown as being vulnerable and weak.
How did we attract/address your audience?
In our opening sequence we used many techniques , one thing we did was attracted the audience though the mise-en-scene, for an example with the female characters, we have gone for teenage girls, so we got them dressed up, like as they would do on a girls night out, with there make up on, with there heels and dresses on. This then attracts the teenage female audience. Then with boys we have the props, as we are using a knife as there is stabbing involved. So the crime based parts will then attract the boys. We have addressed it to teenagers as we think this is a suitable age, as we have rated this 15 we have targeted it for just over 16 year old. We decided to aim it for teen viewers as we have used 18 to 20 year olds in the film, so we thought it would be best to aim it at them then finally we attracted the audience with the sound and camera work, with the sound we used garageband that built up suspense so it made the audience all tense and nervous in the first 2 minutes.
What have you learnt about technology from the process of constructing the product?
When we did our first bit of filming, when we did our preliminary task, we found it quite easy and straight forward. Our storyboard went to plan and everything came together. However when it came to filming our thriller Opening, difficulties started to come about. We started with our storyboard which we then took to Southampton, to help us. But when we got there we started to have problems, for example it was snowing, so we had to wait for the snow to stop before we could film outside. We also had trouble when it came to getting the camera straight and in line properly. So we felt that our shots were on an angle, which wasted a lot of our time when we could have been filming to sort it out. Another thing was when we were filming; we didn’t film enough scenes for it to go together, so we then had to do more and more shots for everything to flow. Our strengths of our filming was that when we actually did get the shot right, the scene looked really good, and you could hear the people speaking without any other distraction noises going on in the background. Also in this process i learnt a lot of things such as and how to do different shots, I learnt that putting the camera on a tripod to give it a steadier view without it being shaky. I also learnt how to edit a film, and started to find different techniques we could use to edit it better.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full production?
The preliminary task was a lot easier that the full production, as there was so much more to do and we didn’t realise this. With the preliminary task we didn’t add in music, which was very hard when it came to our actually production as we had to time everything for it to fit in with what was happening on screen. Also with the editing we didn’t add much editing in to it and if we didn’t add any in the full production it wouldn’t look as right. This was down to we were unable to make any fast decisions on what we were going to produce and we didn’t feel that it would look right or how the audience would respond to that. When we filmed the preliminary task, we then thought our full production would be easy, but we were mistaken and came across a lot of difficulties and challenges. Now we have finished our Full production, I feel that we will never think filming is easy.
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