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

My media product is an opening of a film, which is in the thriller genre with a subgenre of crime. The media product uses basic conventions of a real media product as it has its main characters; a boy and a girl, instantly recognisable as the innocent female victim and the male protagonist. The male protagonist is not normally a teenager, like in Die Hard, John Mcclane played by Bruce Willis. Most thrillers also contain a villain. Here is a photo of Anthony Hopkins playing the villain Hannibal Lecter in the thriller Hannibal. The film also follows the traditional mise en scene with conventional lighting, varying locations of different scenes, and actors playing characters who dress in fairly ‘’everyday’’ clothes. Within this come the performance of the actors, the hair and makeup and the appearance of the actors. The characters are teen age and are played by actors who fit the role well, as they are also being teenagers.  Also, the cinematography of the clip follows conventional decorum with the camera shots, camera angles and camera movements. Thrillers have pacey camera shots and movements and twisting plots so as to create a suspenseful atmosphere towards the audience. My film is a crime thriller so the camera actions are not as fast as they would be for an action thriller however the basic conventions are more or less the same from thriller to thriller, regardless of the subgenre.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The opening sequence of our film features teenagers and is ultimately about a teenager. Our soon-to-be protagonist is a young, white, male; not completely abnormal as this film is based in and around central London and centres around the lives of teenagers. London is often seen as a young-hearted place, where young ‘’hoodlums’’ can be found and so being set in London is not abnormal with the casting of teenagers compared to the countryside where the storyline would be abnormal to not revolve around teens or young people. He is dressed normally for his age and so this was not hard when filming as we had no trouble in getting the right costume. We have only been able to use a limited number of actors and so we couldn’t cast or not cast someone for their race or ethnicity but for their acting ability and so we haven’t tried to represent any one group of people in a certain light. However we have maintained the teenage theme and represented this age group in a way that shows that being a teenager in London can often lead to misery and tragedy. The victim was also a teenager. The story is based around the characters death however this character hasn’t got a big part to play. Not many thrillers cast teenagers as the protagonist which is where our product challenges forms and conventions of real media products. However we have used young a female as the victim as they are vulnerable to the antagonist or criminals. We have used a young girl to include the romantic-vengeance element into the film and this is where our film uses the basic conventions. If we had used a male victim then this would have been more of a film about brotherly love rather than a film about a heart-broken young man who has lost the love of his life. These two conventions both agree and disagree with the classic thriller conventions that the audiences would be used to. This, in turn, would create an unfamiliar effect on the audience.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

My media product is an independent film as we had no budget and no cast other than our group and students who volunteered. This is different to mainstream films as these normally have a multi-million pound budget, a much sought-after cast and fully professional directors and film crew, the films are shown in international cinemas and are expected to make a large profit. Our film, however, can be distributed in a number of ways. As our media product is about young people made by young people, the expected audience would be young people too and so because of this we can allow people to view our product on the internet through social networking sites such as Youtube, Facebook, MySpace, etc. This would be an easy and simple way to view our media product and so people would be able to do it in the comfort of their own homes, thus increasing the amount of people viewing. Possibly our film can be distributed through private, independent cinemas and film festivals who celebrate low-budget films like ours. Low budget films are often not supported by large organisations and so tend not to be mainstream or shown in dependent cinemas which are very common on today’s high streets. Unlike mainstream films, our film had actors with little or no experience filming as there is no funding from big organisations to pay for top notch actors and it’s the same for directors and producers, however obtaining actors is the harder part. There are film festivals which are held specifically for independent films to be seen by a larger audience, like Cannes and Sundance, and so small, low-budgeted films like ours have an opportunity to be seen.

 

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Teenagers are our primary audience as they would maybe feel some understanding towards the characters more than other age groups like those of the 40-60 class. However, thriller genres are enjoyed by all age group but specifically by males. We are not trying to make our product appeal to any one age, gender, ethnicity, region, sexuality or class and status. On the other hand we know that anyone below the minimal age of 13 would not enjoy our product as it is of the thriller genre and even more so as it is a crime thriller, making it even more difficult to understand. In general, thriller films tend to be classed as certificate 12 – 15 but crime thrillers, depending on their content, tend to be classed as 18. After the completion of our media product, I am proud with the concluding result and i do think that this would appeal to our target audience as hoped. However we could have appealed to a wider audience if we had used actors of different ages, genders, ethnicity etc. But this would not have achieved our desired affect and target audience when it came to filming.

How did you attract/address your audience?

Our media product contained scenes filmed in and around school, something every teenager is familiar with and so we thought this may have had a positive effect on attracting our audience as our target is teenagers. Also, to audiences of the non-teenage age group, the scene being in school may be somewhat nostalgic and attract not only teenagers but people in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s as this is not a film about teenagers in school but a crime thriller about teenagers lives outside of school which may appear to a wider audience. Violence, revenge and romance were themes used throughout the film and are quite the opposite from each other, thus attracting the completely opposite people and making them meet in the middle. Our audience feedback from showing our product to our media class proved effective once we installed it into our film. We were told that the sequence of our clips seemed a bit confusing as they were not chronological and featured flashbacks which at first not blatant. However, we were quick to fix this solution by changing the colour effects and making the flashbacks and flash-forwards more obvious to the audience. Also, we were advised what sort of score would be most effective and we added this to our product.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I have never created a media film from scratch before so the processes involved were all new to me. To film, we used digital video cameras, supplied by the school’s media department. These cameras had all the credentials we needed in order to create our film; easy to use, good colour and picture and easy to upload onto the computer. However we were not allocated with a microphone of any sort so had to make do with the one integrated in the video camera which, in turn, affected the sound of the dialogue in the film. We felt fairly confident using DV cameras as they are used in the filming of the popular soap operas Hollyoaks and Eastenders. The point of using these cameras is that a dull, gritty effect is created which adds to the realism of the drama. This suited our film as the melancholic atmosphere and tragedy that is the death of the girl are complimented by the dull colours and gritty effects of using a digital video camera.

   Before filming, we researched the crime-thriller genre and decided to use this as a base for our media product. We learnt more about the conventions and compared films with this subgenre with films of other subgenres of thriller. This research helped us write the script as we knew how we were meant to write it. We also posted our research onto a blogging website, which was open to members of the public to view. Our film is non-linear and so features flash-backs and flash-forwards.

   The iMovie software we used in putting our filming together was easy yet hard to use making the editing part of the production one of the longest and complicated. This software is non-linear and so we were able to manipulate various scenes and clips very easily. We were also able to add scores, titles and other editing effects at the touch of a button which made the editing job that much easier. After using the editing software for a while, the process became a lot easier and we could move on to adding things to our media product; subtitles, colour codes etc.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Since the first preliminary task at the start of the course I have learnt a vast amount of skills I had never had before and used these skills and techniques in the filming and editing process and this helped my group and I progress. Before starting the preliminary task, nor me nor anyone else in my group had used a camera to film before, let alone used different shots, angles, movements etc. We used what we had learnt that lesson to film and as this was all new to us, this was evidently present in the end result which consisted of poorly timed editing and basic mistakes like different background props moving when redoing a scene or the camera being at a different height to before and is what is known as continuity.

When it came to producing the media product, we all had a basic understanding of the editing equipment and I had built confidence in myself to fully function the camera, using it to create the desired effects in our film i.e. the movement and shot and what effect this would have on the audience of our film. The preliminary task prepared us for the actual production of our opening sequence which proved to be hard work. In comparison to the preliminary task, our final media production contains proper camera work and editing up to a good standard.