Our film aims to represent teenagers aged 15+ by featuring young characters and focusing on their everyday lives. We chose to distribute the film through a smaller British company rather than larger American ones in order to better target our intended teenage audience. Through our characters, pacing, and focus on a female protagonist, we aimed to engage this target audience and subvert expectations for the thriller genre. The process of constructing the film taught us to utilize various technologies like PowerPoint, blogs, and video editing software to plan, communicate, film, and edit our media product effectively.

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

2. How does your media product
represent particular social groups ?
I think that our film does successfully represent our chosen social group. As the
characters in our film are of the age that we wanted to aim the film at. We see
the common stereotype of the girl in the video who shows a contrast of emotion
from the beginning until the end of the opening she seems to be showing a lot of
emotion and seems to be very helpless about the situation she is then put in .
The camera angles used in this clip helped to add more emotion to the clip and
we see the camera looking down upon her when she gets the picture as if she is
being looked down upon from a high angle. Our film opens up with a young girl
walking a middle class home and she seems to be quite well off with the
technologies that she has within her home. The only characters we see on
screen are the young girl and we get vague shots of her mother. When she sees
the picture of her friend we can see the class difference between the two. We
can tell this by the costume that her kidnapped friend is working that he is of a
lower class than her. Our film plays upon the common stereotypes of the middle
class as usually it would be a white family who are the middle class characters
in the film but we now have the black characters as the middle class people and
it is actually the white character who is working class. We decided to do this so
our film would be able to stand out from the rest and so it didn’t just follow
common the common conventions of common social class ideologies.

3. What kind of media institution might
distribute your media product and why ?
I thought that the film would be able to be distributed by a revolver or gunslinger
production company as they usually make British films aimed at a youth
audience. So they would be able to distribute the film to the teen/youth audience
that we aimed the film at. As they are already well know with British audiences
and have made successful films such as KiDULTHOOD and Shank which have
been very popular with the audience it has been aimed at. This film also shows
a culture mix yet the genre of our film usually mainly have a predominately white
cast so , yet I believe for the audience we are aiming it at having a mixed cast
with many people of different colours and cultures helps make the film more
appealing to our audience. In our film our lead is actually a woman which plays
on the classic concept of the genre of film that we are making. Making our film
stand out from the rest as usually its women who need the saving in many
thriller films yet in our film its the young woman doing the saving playing upon
the gender stereotypes of the genre. I thought that it would be better to go with a
smaller British company rather than to look at the bigger American companies to
distribute our film. As they suit the target market that we were aiming our film at
so I think that they would be able to do a better job with the distribution of the
film.

4. Who would be the audience for your
media product ?
Our film is aimed at teenagers from 15+ the film would be given a 15 certificate.
I conducted a social survey amongst a group of teenagers and the results that
came back said that many of them enjoyed watching British youth films in
comparison to big American blockbusters. Many of them also commented and
said they would like to see a British thriller made so from this we decided to
make a psychological thriller as many of them also said that they would like a
film that made them think, in comparison to a film with high visual gloss. So from
this we decided to take our research and make a film from what we had learnt.
Although the film is aimed at teenagers the film does also contain a variety
people of different ages and classes so the film is open and appeals to many
other older people as well. I would like for my film to be watched by a variety of
boys and girls of different ages as I think it appeals to many people and it also
plays upon the stereotype of psychological thrillers having the main protagonist
being a female character putting a twist on the film rather than having the main
character be a man or young male. A film like this would help to showcase
young British talent as well.

5. How did you attract/address your
audience?
The one way that we wanted to engage with the audience was to use young teenage characters as the
protagonists in the film so that it would appeal to our specific target market. As most psychological thrillers
usually have adult actors as the main characters so we wanted to play upon the common We also focused
upon things such as costume to make them look like the average everyday teenager to give the film a sense of
realism. Here in picture one we see the protagonist wearing a grey hoodie something stereotypically
associated with young youths. In our film we have the female character playing the hero type character who is
meant to appeal to the audience and be the liked character throughout the film. We intended for our film to
be a certificate 15 so that the people in our target market are able to go to the cinema are are then able to
watch our film, we are happy with the way our actors portrayed their character roles we see the female as the
innocent girl who is put in a situation who then needs to save her friend and the male is the one who needs to
be saved and is helpless in this situation playing upon the common codes and conventions of the thriller
genre. We used a lot of close up shots of our female character so the audience were able to clearly see the
expressions on her face and it makes it more personal for the audience so they feel like they have connected
with her as a character. I believe that the shots used are very powerful and make the audience engage more
when they’re watching it. The start of the film is very face paced and gets straight into the action of the film
not wasting any time and we think that this helps appeal to the audience we want to attract as it then helps
to keep them on their toes and alert wanting to find out what’s happening, the cutting from the girl to the
woman cooking in the kitchen helps with the pace of the film and at keeping the audience wondering what is
going on and why the cutting is relevant to the film.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the
process of constructing this product ?
I used a conglomeration of technologies in the process using products such as powerpoint to do my
work. Then uploading them to sites such as slide-share to make them more appealing and so they
could be presented more formally and efficiently. Google has been very useful in the planning and
research being able to discover information that I needed adequately plan out my work. Using sites
such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr & Blogger I was able to easily communicate with my target market
and get the research I needed without much hassle. Cutting down on the time I would need to find
this information out, using sites such as Youtube I was able to efficiently process my work from one
media platform to another making things much easier for me. In addition to this using things like BBM
on Blackberries also helped with this as you could easily contact who you needed to and gather the
information that you needed. With the filming of the film I was using the standard instruments for
filming such as the camera tripod and mono-pod Using things such as the tripod and mono-pod
helped greatly with the filming as it made it possible to get steady shots and using them also helped
with getting higher canted angles you wouldn’t be able to get normally. The filming process itself
proved to be quite difficult having to plan out all the shots you wanted to use and thinking of things
such as lighting battery life. We were introduced to Blogger from the start of the process it is a
blogging site that is available to anyone and it has helped me to present my work and helps you plan
out the stages of your work upon multiple blog pages. Using media products such as final cut and I-
Movie made it possible to edit our film and add in additional details we may not have thought of
having. Getting used to the product did prove to be very challenging but once I had grasped the hang
of it, it was actually pretty easy to use and manage and it made it possible for us to successfully edit
our film and go back to it and change and add in things as well. Using the Mac computers was pretty
easy and simple and having them made it possible for all the research to be done, the fact that they
also come with the majority of the products you need to make a successful film was also very helpful.
Throughout this whole process technology has paid a big part in the making of our film.