2. 1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
Our film uses, and builds on, the pre-existing conventions deployed in various thriller films
to create a realistic media product. Our opening shot establishes the main character, who
is to become the victim; our victim is a young, pretty woman who appears to be alone. In
this, we suggest an innate vulnerability to her character as typical of a female victim in the
thriller/ slasher genre.
Throughout our movie opening it remains unclear as to whom the antagonist is - a general
air of mysteriousness is common place in thriller genre, however thriller conventions
usually dictate that the antagonist will be male, we have challenged this convention in so
far that we have made the antagonists identity uncertain, and made no conscious attempt
to suggest their gender. It is in this sense too that our films genre becomes somewhat
blurred with the feeling of a horror/supernatural subgenre being introduced.
3. 2) How does your media product represent particular social groups
The social groups represented in our film are namely women and teens. It can be
seen that our film; in keeping with the assumptions of many films in the thriller
genre, employs a young female actress as protagonist. The stigma associated with
the young woman is often that they are vulnerable, naïve and irresponsible – in the
opening two minutes of our film we do not suggest any of these stereotypes apart
from in casting choice, as we felt we had time only to establish setting and characters
etc.
4. 3)What kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?
It is likely that that our film would be distributed by an independent organisation, such as
‘Independent’, this is because it was very low budget and used amateur actors etc..
However, as highlighted by our target audience research and feedback we have been widely
successful in creating a thriller film which proves popular across wide audiences.
5. 4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
Our audience would primarily be our proposed target audience consisting of young adults; as
investigated in our targeted audience research. This is because we feel that our film would
appeal to this audience most. However, it is not unlikely that the film could appeal to a much
wider audience than initially targeted, as the thriller genre is a very large and popular genre
6. 5) How did you attract/address your audience?
Movie producers attract their audiences using a range of different media; for example
posters, trailers, and interviews with the cast. This is all done to make sure that people
know about the film before it is released so it is eagerly anticipated and has an audience
even before anyone has seen it. To create this kind of hype around our movie we created
fliers with the title of the movie, ‘The Watcher’, a picture of the main actress in her
role, the names of the cast and the date when we were going to put on a public screening
of our finished product. This made people aware of our film but didn’t give too much
away which made people more interested as they were intrigued and had a desire to
watch the movie even before it was finished being made. We also addressed out audience
on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. We knew that this would be an
effective way of interacting with our audience because our target audience is of the same
age as we are, and we felt that if we were to find out about an up and coming movie it
would most likely be from one of those sites.
7. 6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing
this product
iMovie - to edit our film we used iMovie. I learnt how to capture clips from the video camera
and how to drag and drop them into the actual film. When it comes down to editing using
iMovie I learnt how edit the transitions, add effects, how to arrange clips on the timeline, how
to place audio onto the timeline, we used a lot of these effects in our project.
Camcorder - To shoot our film we used a Sony camcorder. It was very easy to get to grips
with, very practical .
8. 7) Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have
learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I have learned a lot since the preliminary task – from how to film properly, to how to use the equipment properly and
how to edit. For example, the match on action camera work in our preliminary task was very jumpy and the
continuity was poor.
Through learning how to overlap the filming of the separate shots by a considerable amount, and re-doing the shot if
it didn’t match up correctly, the match on actions in our final product were much smoother and the continuity
editing was more skilfully executed. We also didn’t use a tripod during the filming of our preliminary task; and we
realised afterwards that to create an even, still shot we had to use one; this made the shots look more professional
when we used one in our final product.
Something else that we learned from filming our preliminary task is how to edit the filming to a higher standard;
including splitting the shots, continuity editing (match on action), and adjusting volume. The editing of our
preliminary task was amateurish, so we spent a lot more time on editing our final product to create a more
professional looking film. We also used a lot of different techniques in editing our final product than we did for our
preliminary task – this required different skills which we acquired during the course of the editing process as neither
of us had really used iMovie before. Having to teach ourselves how to edit the movie was challenging, but it soon
became clear and we used our new skills to create a relatively professional looking film.
We also put a lot more thought into the location of our final film than we did for the preliminary task. The
preliminary task was filmed in a classroom and looked very unnatural as the scene we were filming was supposed to
look like it was unfolding at someones house, rather than at a school. But for our final product we researched
locations and put a lot more thought in to where we were going to film it, and as a result of this it looks more natural
and is a lot more believable – ultimately making the final film more successful in its intent, which is to entertain an
audience.
