1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For our media project, we simply kept the conventions of a thriller as a base for our production. We wanted our movie to fit in the thriller genre so we had to have some key conventions which acted as the independent variables, such as the theme of death and betrayal as well as the low feeling music throughout the scenes. Once we had laid down the foundation, we simply adapted to this and used our creativity to make something unique and not along the lines of other media products. For example our intro showed our protagonist discovering the death of his brother. This was a common theme that was expected to happen in the beginning of thrillers from our research. A character, or relative of one appears dead, but it is not revealed to the audience how the death came to be and using this theme of mystery at the beginning draws in you're audience. Although we used this branch of a thriller convention, we challenged this with our protagonist being a black teenager. Usually the protagonist would be a white male adult, however as well as using a black male for our main role, we have also used a teenager. This we felt made our media product more enticing because it had never been seen before and this would make our product stand alone from the rest as well as still applying to its genre following the key conventions.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our media product uses very little dialogue, but through the use of misc-en-scene we have neutralized the representation of black individuals and teenagers. As our research showed, black individuals have a higher percentage of being represented in the negative side of the news, for committing crimes and other illegal acts, this far out-weighs the positive side and this is why the stereotype of negativity forms. Teens are also represented as individuals who are always out-going or lazy people that seem to do nothing useful with their lives. However in our media product, rather than contrasting the stereotypes to change the thoughts of the audience, we have simply neutralized these ideologies. We represent our protagonist as a genuine teenager on his way home. We did this with the use of mid and establishing shots of him on his way home to make him appear as a normal character. This would neutralize any biases the audience may have and they would learn how through the journey of our protagonist, how his character has been formed from being represented as this genuine figure in the intro.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute you're media product and why?
When deciding the media institution to distribute our media product, my group and I were tied between Paramount pictures and Universal studios. These are 2 of the 'big six' institutions and they are both very well known for publishing thriller movies, so these were very good appropriate distributors for our movie. In the end we chose Paramount pictures due to the fact we felt we could relate to the movies its published such as the Godfather and Star Trek. We knew our movie would cost lots of money to produce due the amount scenes in different locations we would have as well as the conflict happening, so we would need a large production company to produce our product in order to make a large profit. As a larger media institution would be able to distribute the product in to wider magnitude.
To distribute our movie we would first start with online trailers on a website such as YouTube. This is accessible by millions of people and its it doesn't cost anything to see so our movie would gain lots of recognition and popularity. We would then invest in movie posters for our movie placing them on buses and underground tube station walls. This will attract further attention to our audience, informing them our movie will also be in cinemas, where we will further advertise with billboards starring the cast of our movie. After viewings in the cinema have ended, we will use our media institution to distribute our movie in the format of DVD as a way of having a permanent copy and it will also be able to be downloaded online.
4/5. Who would be the audience for your media product?How did you address/attract your audience?
Our target audience for our media product was ages 16-35 for both sexes but particularly focusing on women. Our demographic showed use more women had a interest in psychological thrillers and we used the age range of 16 to 35 for the relationship links the audience would have with our characters in our production. Ages 16 to 21 are ages when you are still in your youth and you can relate to the struggles and loss our protagonist has undergone, This would make our audience almost form an invisible bond with our character making the movie more tense and gripping for them to watch meaning they would enjoy it a lot more overall. We chose to extend the age range to 35 for the complete opposite reason which we felt would still be effective. Those at ages 35 can relate to the struggles of the youth as they've been through the ages on their teens, so they too can develop an attachment to our movie and understanding with the psychological horrors our protagonist is experiencing. We tried to form this bond through addressing our audience with the theme of loss and suffering in our intro from the death of Gregory. (the protagonists brother) This would form an initial bond with the audience making them have some sort of feeling early on the film.
6. What have you learn t about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Throughout this process i have learn t the process of creating the product is only limited by you're imagination. As i was the person filming the whole production, i had the most hands on time with the camera so i had to learn my way through the functions of camera. Adjusting focus and deciding whether i should move closer or just zoom in were decisions i had to make to try and produce best outcome. During the editing process I learnt that making a film is like solving a puzzle with a few missing pieces. We had all the clips we required but some were inconsistent, so in order to keep the continuity editing i had to clip and shorten individual clips, e.g when i had to synchronize the timing of the hand on the door with it opening on the other side making our match on action. Timing was a big learning curve to overcome. As well as making sure each clip flew into the next, sound also had to be synchronized. I had clip the music to fit particular scenes, but i had to make sure it started and ended on the right tone it give it a naturally fading effect. I have also learn t the process is much easier than i had originally thought. If i had more experience i could next time improve my final product a lot more, learning sounds could easily be acquired and added would have made me worry about the sound while filming.
7. Looking back at the preliminary task, what do you feel you learn t in the progression from it to the full product?
Comparing my preliminary task and final product i feel i have developed my accuracy and precision with both filming and editing. As i filmed both projects i have personally been able to spot drastic differences and the quality as a whole. As you could see in the preliminary task, the camera was consistently shaking and there were a lot of bad cuts into next shots. Being the first time i had filmed and edited a product like that one, i didn't recognize the depth of how badly executed it was, and comparing it to the full product i feel i have improved by camera stability skills and the way I represent scenes with the different type of shots, such as standard mid shot clips, i have not included zooming while recording as i did previously, I think it looks genuinely bad and isn't a great technique to be applied. My editing skills and creativity have also developed. My match on action has been refined as seen in my final product compared to my preliminary task. I have developed a finer eye when it comes to editing. With cleaner shots and cuts and sound synchronizing making my overall product much more refined
