The document discusses a student's media production of a thriller film opening. It reflects on how the production used conventions from real thriller films in aspects like costumes, locations, and lighting. The student aimed to represent teenagers as the main social group. The most likely distribution method would be straight-to-DVD or television due to the low-budget nature of the production. The intended audience was identified as males aged 15-18 based on research of similar films' audiences. Through the production, the student learned about challenges of filming in low light, the importance of shot types and camera movements, and skills in editing software. Feedback on a rough cut helped fine tune the final product.

1. 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?<br />Real media products had a main influence on our costumes we decided to use for our thriller opening. Specifically the choice to use a mask on the killer and to dress the victim in white. Main influences came from ‘The book of Eli’ which was the first thriller movie we analysed for ideas. This is where the mask idea sprang from. We also tried to incorporate black hats and white hats into our production, this is used in many films (not only thrillers) and makes it easier to distinguish between good and bad characters in the film. For example our killer was dressed in black and our victim was dressed in white.<br />Location was once again influenced by ‘The book of Eli’, the opening scene of which is set in a forest. However we also found that isolation was a common thriller convention and decided to use this as a basis in our film. The other location we included in our thriller opening was a maize field. We decided to use this because it is not a common location found in thriller movies, here we decided to challenge the conventions of location in thriller movies.<br />Lighting was a huge part of our film. From our research we gathered that opening scenes tended to be dim and dark. For example the opening scene to ‘The book of Eli’ and ‘Vacancy’. We chose to use this dark night effect to emphasise the fear of our thriller opening.<br />2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?<br />In our production we chose to represent the main character as a harmless boy who appears to be very normal. We have done this deliberately to contrast it against the harsh opposite of his alter-ego (the villain). <br />We have chosen to represent the female victim in our opening as vulnerable because it emphasised the danger present in the opening. We also believe that most teenagers view women as more vulnerable to danger than men are. <br />The main social group we have represented in our thriller production is teenagers. Because this is also our target audience we tried to represent the teenagers our film and normal teenagers so that the target audience can relate to the characters. <br />3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?<br />The most likely way to distribute our production would be releasing in straight to DVD. I believe this because our production is a typical thriller and does not hold anything unique to this film that challenges conventions a lot. The production would also most likely be a low budget film and therefore wouldn’t get the attention needed due to it offering nothing new to the industry. For example the film Paranormal Activity was a low budget film and had a great success at the box office due to it being something that people hadn’t seen before and it offered something other films couldn’t. On the other hand I also believe that our production is not as complex or subversive enough to be eligible for an art house. A big possibility for distributing our film is television. More specifically airing the movie on channels such as Film4, a British film channel, at a late time. For example 10pm to 2am. I think this time would be best at first because of the age rating of the production and the fact that the company producing the film would be small companies. <br />4: Who would be the audience for your media product?<br />The audience for our thriller movie would be people aged 15 to 18. From our research we found that younger people preferred thriller movies to older viewers which gave us the information we needed to decide on which audience would be best to create a film for. We also decided to aim the production at males because we believed they would enjoy our plot and thrillers in general more than most females. Evidence of this from IMDB shows that 985 men under 18 compared to only 101 females under 18 rated the film ‘The book of Eli’. I realise that this does not show that they liked the film but it does show the majority of the audience who viewed the film. The same goes for ratings on ‘The dark knight’: 9171 votes from males under 18 compared to 2561 votes from women of the same age group.<br />5: How did you attract/address your audience?<br />After creating our rough cut we created a questionnaire asking if they liked the film or not and what in particular they thought was good. The result from this showed that more male participants in the screening liked the thriller than women. This suggested to us that our film appeals more to the young male. We believe this was because of the action scenes present in the production which may have appealed less to women of the same age due to personal preference. I believe our production also attracts the audience from the use of a chase scene. Human curiosity plays a role here due to the viewer wanting to know what happens to the girl in the production. This chase scene would hopefully draw the audience in and make them want to watch the rest of the film. Also the fact that the villain is masked may attract viewers who enjoy thriller films with masked menaces.<br />6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?From filming our thriller opening I have learnt a great deal about the digital cameras. The main thing I’ve learnt about the cameras is that they are not very effective at filming in dark locations, for example in a forest at dusk which happened to be where we decided to film our thriller. This proved a problem due to the camera not being able to pick up enough detail and making the shots appear very grainy. From our production I have learnt that shot angles, movement and shot type play a vital role in creating the right effect in a thriller. Our group realised we had to use a greater amount of high angle and low angle shots in our thriller to emphasise the vulnerability of the victim and the power of the killer in our chase scene. We also learnt that camera movements, especially speed of movement, effect the mood and atmosphere of the shot. For example we found that the slow pan upwards create a sense of tension and the slow movement contrasts against the fast pace of the chase to follow. We found in our production that we used more close up and mid range shots. This is because we wanted to keep the audience focused on the action and therefore used few long shots in our production. I learned that by keeping the audience focused on the action it makes the film more interesting to watch. <br />For our production we used Final Cut Express to edit our film. This was the first time I've used Final Cut and therefore I have learnt a great deal about the software and how to use it. I have learnt that sequencing shots needs to be precise to avoid making it seem amature. We also used a lot of effects in our production, mainly to make the scenes in the film appear dark to give the illusion of it being at night time. Adding these effects was difficult at first however I soon came accustomed to applying them. I also learnt how to add titles to our production. We used Live Type to create the title of our film, 'Isolation', and imported it into final cut when finished. Once again I have never used Live Type before making this a new experience for me.<br />7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?<br />The main thing I have learnt from progressing from the preliminary task is that when shooting you need to take more than one shot of the same scene. If you don’t them you leave yourself rushed for time if a certain scene isn’t up to standard or if something is included in a shot that shouldn’t be, for example a tripod in the background. Regarding working in a group I believe I have learnt and understood the importance of sharing ideas and knowledge when planning the storyline of the production, the shooting of the shots and constructing the final product with sound and titles. This also ties into listening to audience feedback which I also learnt is an important asset to making a film. The audience feedback we got from our rough cut screening was extremely helpful and reassured us that we were doing a good job. Most of the comments we did receive were constructive and helped us fine tune the production to the majority’s preferences. I believe the strengths of our production were the effects and the camera shots and angles. The dark effect created on final cut attempted to change the time of day the location appeared. I took on the role of editing the colour effects and I am generally pleased with the outcome. Some of the camera shots we used in the film I thought were quite creative and all the shots had meaning and purpose behind them, plus they were deeply thought out. On the other hand the weakness of the production I believe was the music. The music length fitted our production perfectly and the climaxes in the song matched the action perfectly as well however I thought the music was lacking something and the overall tune seemed a bit old fashioned. Although this may be because I’ve listened to the track too many times. Overall I believe the most important thing I have learnt about film making is that the planning is the most essential part. If I was to repeat this task I would improve the detail of planning greatly more specifically the precision and in depth detail of the storyboard. This would improve the efficiency of the shoot. Whereas if the storyboard was vague the shoot may be unorganised and the film may be made up as it goes along.<br />