1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions of real media products?
As a group, we decided to produce an opening sequence for a mystery Thriller. We searched in to what a mystery thriller involves and thought about how we could adapt our own ideas to create an opening sequence that matched the criteria. For example, we produced a soundtrack that was made on GarageBand made up of creepy music and eerie noises to help bring more of an intense atmosphere. This was played through half the sequence and then stopped as soon as the mystery man woke up with a huge gasp. We then had a “boom” noise at the end when the title of our sequence came up to help bring the audience’s attention back to what the film would be called. Another characteristic involved within a mystery thriller is not knowing who the killer is. We were able to make sure that at no point could you see who the killer was, which helped bring suspense as to whether or not you will see him before the movie has finished. The only part of the man you do see is his arm when opening the door, which can also help the audience’s memory keep that minor detail in mind throughout the film. This was a positive on our part because it means that the audience will have a higher chance on remembering our film.
When it came to the timing of the production, we thought that the effects of the clips would have a good impact of putting suspense and tension on the audience as most of the scenes were blurry. From this is could sometimes make the audience feel confused as to what is going on, but we thought that if we had a continuous walking scene and a part where he wakes up the audience would understand that he may have thought it was a dream when actually it wasn’t.
We had a look in to different films that support our sub genre, such as Ghost ship, Momento and Abduction. These are horror/mystery and phsychologoical thrillers which helped us develop the sort of atmosphere we needed to create in our opening sequence.
2. How does your product represent particular social groups?
I think our particular piece represents social groups, because when thinking stereotypically, when a group of girls are getting ready to go out, they normally wear more or less the same. For example, they may normal wear really short dresses and heels with straight hair and a lot of make-up, when in this piece we went for a more subtle look so that we didn’t take the attention away from what the scene was intending to show. Therefore our characters challenge the gerneral steriotype of young girls.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Personally I don’t think that any major distribution company, e.g. Paramount Studios, would produce our idea in to an actual film as this is a very basic and simple idea. For example, they produced a film called Paranormal Activity 3 which is a psyhological thriller. They make the film so intense that it would be tricky for us to follow in their footsteps. Also, they would be able to produce a more in depth and intense film. If they had the chance to create a film continuance from our opening sequence, I’m sure that they would produce and idea that has got all the criteria needed to make the audience feel satisfied. However, The Village which was written, produced, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, may take an interest in to our idea because even though they’re ideas are so originial, our opening sequence will be able to fit all the catogories that are listed within this film, for example, the mystery of who is going round on a murderous hunt.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
In my personal opinion, I thought that our media project would be suitable for 13+ as you couldn’t see any violence or gory parts to the scene, and you couldn’t hear any rude language. When producing the research to look at more of a back ground to our specific genre, we see that the main effects in a 15+ or 18 normally contain a lot of horror and gore, a bigger fear factor and discourteous language. Our opening sequence had minimal gore, no unpleasant language and we had more of a jumpy effect than a horror effect. Our original target audience was aimed at 16-18 year old girls, however in my personal opinion; I feel that it would probably still be suitable for a younger age. Also due to the cast change now involving a guy instead of a 5 girls, I think that it could benefit girls and boys rather than just girls. We then asked our friends of a similar age, whether they would take an interest in to watching a film like this. The answers they gaave were very useful and it helped us develop more of an idea. We looked on the internet at past media productions from other schools that were doing the same thing, which helped us gain an understand ing of the types of things we needed to add in in order for the audience to be interested.
- How did you attract/address your audience?
We did this mainly through our mise-en-scene and our characters. We made sure that the actresses involved were based around the same age as our target audience, 16-21 and that they were all girls in order for the audience to relate to the film. We wanted the audience to feel as though they could ask themselves “what would I do in that situation”. When creating and editing our sequence, we thought the best place to bring fear to our target audience was when Pip got stabbed and was lying on the floor with blood coming out of her hip. We were able to achieve this by making the blood seem more realistic by creating it ourselves and the way we had filmed it made it look like the murderer was looking over her. Another part that worked well was when the murderer woke up thinking it was all a dream. This scene was particularly jumpy which helped bring the fear factor higher because the gasp of air was so loud. When thinking of the mise-en-scene, we thought that it would be a good idea to use a knife in order for Pip to get stabbed as it would be interesting for the boys to watch. Steriotypically mos boys are interested in the violent sort of films. We also thought that we could build up the suspense with music. We created our piece of music on GarageBand which was helpful because we had loads of different sounds to work with. When looking at camera techniques, we had to be careful so that the audience couldn’t see who the murdedrer was. We did this by obeying the 180’ rule and by using the camera handheld at parts so it was as though you were looking through the murderers eyes.
- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
There were some strengths and weaknesses when using the camera, I think that one main positive was that I knew how to work the camera as I had used it before starting this project, one negative however is that after a large amount of time, the camera can become relatively heavy and then you lose focus of what you are filming because your concentrating on not dropping the camera. When using Final Cut software, I thought this was fairly difficult as it was on an Apple Mac computer and I have never used one of those before. As I have hadn’t used either an Apple Mac or Final Cut, when it came to my turn to edit, a few problems were raised. For example, as there were people in our group who had had experience in these things before, they were able to use it quickly, however it took me a whole lesson to edit 3 scenes. Duriong the filming process, more and more problems started to rise. Foe example, when we were filming in Southampton, it began to snow. So we had to wait for the snow to stop first before we could do anything. We also had to wait for all the other actresses to arrive. After we had finished this part of the filming and we started editing this, we realised that we hadnt filmed for long enough in most of the scenes, so we had to take more shots in order for them to flow. This became a problem because we were using up a lot of the time we had before the deadline. I learnt that from these, we need to plan ahead incase these problem,s happen again. W had to put all of our blogs that we had created of the filming process on to a software called Blogger. This was once again an easy process as I have used it before and use it quite regularly, however, I didn’t know that you could have more than one person put blogs on the same page that you could. This was a good experience because it was able to help me catch up with what I had missed from previous lessons. Also it helped me develop the blogs further. For example, a post of the main characters was put up which helped me develop the blog of Final Costume.
We also used a software called Garageband. This was a simple process as I had used it before. However, I learnt how to turn the actual music that we had created in to an MP3 file and put it on itunes, which will come in handy when doing the upcoming creations.
- Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full production?
I think overall, that for a start, the planning for the preliminary task went relativly well as we were all able to put some form of idea in and manage to come up with a sequence that had a comedic side to it. We were able to make fast decisions on what we were going to produce and what we wanted the audience to feel. On the other hand, when trying to create and opening sequence, instead of creating an idea straight away, it took us a number of weeks to produce an idea that we were all happy with. I have learnt from this that teamwork is a major skill to learn, along with tolerance and patience. When filming, I was able to improve more on my knowledge of how to use the camera and the FinalCut software. I was also able to learn more about what shot angles can be used and what effect they had because we were doing it ourselves rather than watching someone else. With the editing, it became easier the more I used it. There are still a few pieces that I don’t know about, such as fading out music and scenes and adding the music to the sequence, however, I’m sure that these skills will improve over time as we continue through the course
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