In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of a real media product?
The conversation
Similar to our film "Twisted," the sequence for "The Conversation" is established in a busy urban environment. In our sequence this is where the antagonist is introduced. Urban areas are regularly used in thrillers because it fits some of the popular occurring story-lines involving characters who suit this surrounding.
Other conventions of the opening of the thriller genre may include; establishing the main characters, keys props, close up shots, fast pace actions and some others.
In our film "Twisted" we shot a close up of a woman to establish her as the main character and get the audience to familiarize themselves with her. We also filmed a close up of our main prop which was a "key" to establish to the audience that this prop will be something important to the story-line.
The main character throwing something away creates tension and suspense. It tells the audience that she has done something which she wants to forget.
Although our opening is not particulary fast pace, we felt it contained suspence by cross cutting between 2 settings, the fast urban environment and the bleak annonomous empty woods.
The titles in our sequence are simple but the edit is edgy and creates a sense of fear.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our film represents an urban middle class life, whe
re a wealthy woman has killed her boyfriend because of domestic abuse.
In thriller films, they do not normally give away immediately at the beginning who the antagonist is. This was our aim. Although by making our antagonist throw something away showing she has a secret, the way we dressed her does not give her secrets away. she looks "normal." Another film that does this is Jennifer's Body.
In marathon man the protagonist is introduced running in an empty park, dressed in casual clothes.
Although my film opens with a si
milar theme of a woman traveling, she is not the protagonist but is the antagonist. We show this by making her stand out in a busy urban area because she is on her own, wearing big sunglasses to cover her face and once she is at her destination she throws something away showing she is trying to forget something. Her smart blazer, designer bag and smart boots show she is quite a sofisticated woman and is wealthy.
Although megan fox plays the antagonist in this film, the way she is dressed does not give this away.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product
and why? How will you attract/ address your audience?
This student film has 5,612 views and has been online on youtube for a year.
to construct that strategy. In order to make my film successful on line, i am going to begin
by creating a vimeo. Once this has received a lot of hits i will then upload my video onto
youtube. I can do this because i am aware that it can now be successful. In order to
introduce people to my film i will create a Facebook page to advertise it and send a link
onto friends i have on this networking site. I could also have a screening of the film for
friends/ family and piers to introduce them to the film officially. I will then ask friends to
send this onto their friends and i think this is a good strategy to get a lot of hits. As well
I could also try to get my film into independent film festivals such as Raindance and they
may then put my film onto their virtual film websites.
Here is an example of a Facebook page specifically for films-
Who will be your audience for your media product?
When preparing out opening sequence to our thriller, we had to think about our audience. Our audience would be aged between 20- 35, 80% skewed female, and their class will be C2DE.
Our audience is is Technically Savvy and is likely to be working class (profession such as admin officer/ secretary), enjoys socialising with friends, regular cinema visitor, will have their own page on a social networking site (most likely facebook or twitter), reads often (books aswell as celebrity magazines), owns a blackberry, uses public transport, takes pride in their image, busy scheduled, keeps a diary, healthy diet, has an ipod.
This is an image of what you may find in our audiences bag:
This bag belongs to Jennifer. She is a 26 year old woman who works as a receptionist in a solicitors firm.
· NOW magazine
· Diary and Pen
· Purse
· Hand cream
· Selfridges Receipt
· Water Bottle
· Blackberry
· Cinema Discount Vouchers
What have you learnt about technologies from the process constructing this product?
Before starting our film project all 3members of my group were new to everything. None of us had any experience therefore during preperation, filming and editing, we picked up loads of new skills.Research and preperation:
Before we started filming we had to learn about different genres within the thriller genre. To research these we used the search engine google to look at various websites.
We watched various thriller films, including marathon man, to gain ideas on what skills are used in filming a thriller film e.g. camera angles, shots, music etc.
We watched openings of various thriller films to give us even more of an idea of what to include in our opening. We looked at the camera pace, match cuts, music, titles, and other aspects. We watched these clips mainly on youtube.
Before starting this product i did not realise the usefullness of google and youtube. The information we found out on google was easy to access and helped us a lot with our project. The clips we watched on youtube were easy to access and their was a wide range that we could study and analyse.
Productions:
When filming, we used our storyboard to help us keep track of what we needed to do. The storyboard aloud us to plan in advance; the angles of each shot, the mise en scene, the location and to know who in the group is going to be doing what. It kept us organised and allowed us to seperate tasks into the short time we had. A shot i think we used well in our thriller was the low angle shot of the woman on the bridge. The low angle shot made her look weak as she was so far away from the camera and her surrounding was very big compared to her. When filming we had to take into consideration the weather conditions. This is for the safety of the camera and also the different weather conditions would effect the editing of our final work. When filming shots for our match cut, one thing we need to do is make sure there arent any people in one shot that wouldnt be in the next, as it will look unproffesional. The area we chose (london bridge) was hard for our filming as the amount of people in the area changed rapidly. One minute the area would be empty and the next it would be crow
ded. If we was to film this project again, although i feel we edited it well, i would choose a setting that has a lot less people travelling through it.
Editing:
When editing out final piece of work, we put a lot of effort and time into making it as proffesional as we could. Our preliminary task helped us rehearse for this task and gave us the chance to get used to the software we needed to use.
Our edits from one setting to the other did not fit when we first put them onto Final Cut Pro, so we experimented with different effects to the find the one we thought suited them best.
For our match cuts we took a lot of time, playing the clips in slow motion, to make sure that they looked neat and accurate. We also included shot reverse shot when editing.
To create our titles we used "live Type". This programme contained a number of text styles, sizes, colours and also different effects. You could choose where on the page the font will appear and also decide whether you want a plain background or whether you would like the texts to go over your video. We chose to have our titles over our video as we wanting the tension to continue building and we felt that having a black screen seperationg the clips at any point would reduce the tension built.
For our music we used "Soundtrack Pro." On this programme we could upload our video and playback music over our clip, to see what went well and what didnt. The programme had loads of different styles of music, as well as different sound effect and it also allowed you to overlap sounds. This helped us to make our music as unique as we could. We used two different music clips onto our track, one to suit each setting. In order to make the music sound proffesional we had to learn how to fade it in and out and where it was appropriate to overlap. We also used some natural sound in our thriller opening.
We also put togever a video which explains in word out experiance of different technologies during out filming process -->
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the
progression from it to the full product?
our main problem with this exercise was that the camera was not in focus. Although we focused the camera when we started, we did not focus it after every shot which meant that it did not stay in focus. this made the film look unprofessional and was hard to see. This made us extra aware when filming our final piece and we checked after every shot that the camera was in focus. If we did not do this then we would have had to reshoot everything.
This clip shows a shot from our preliminary exercise and shows that the camera was unfocused
When filming our preliminary match cut we did not take a variety of footage. Rather than filming each shot from different angles, we planned what angle we wanted and just shot that. This meant that we could not change our mind about the way the shots would match therefore could not improve anything we didn't like. However because of this, we remembered to film each shot in loads of different angles for our final piece which gave us a wider variety of choice.
When filming our preliminary match cut we did not line up shots properly. This made our film look unprofessional and messy. Because of this, in our spare time we asked for help off one of the technicians who taught us how to line up shots properly and this allowed us to use this skill in our final film.
This clip shows that our shot was not lined up in our preliminary film. T'sharna's head is cut out.
Audience feedback and comments?
After our screening at the cinema, we got feedback off of some of our audience.This image shows the words that came up most often:
We also asked one member of the audience to give us a video feedback of what they thought and what they would improve:
This interview was filmed in City And Islington College!!
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